Una’s house was bigger than her sister’s and she had a bigger bed with a goose-feather eiderdown. Her husband was more prosperous than Vanda’s. She regretted that she and Vanda didn’t speak these days. A flint of jealousy struck a flame in her. To think that Vanda’s husband still… still… and now a baby. Una’s husband hardly ever touched her.

This year, she hoped, Sorina would be married. Una had her eye on the mayor’s son as a potential husband for her. She firmly believed girls shouldn’t choose their husbands; it should be left to the elders of the village, wise men like her father. Of course, she’d mentioned the mayor’s son to him. But it wasn’t a match for her daughter that kept her awake. No, what gnawed at her was what she’d heard pass between her father and Edith; what Edith had said about Grandma’s shawl. Una shuddered at the memory of the old woman with her mean eyes and hard hands. She’d remained frightened of the shawl long after Grandma had died. But why?

Una woke in the dawn of a cold spring day. Her husband rolled away from her. She sat up and tried to rid herself of a nightmare. She was in her father’s house and she couldn’t find Vanda. It’s hard to know your age in dreams, she thought. There was a sound coming from her father’s bedroom. She pushed open the door, and there was Vanda, the shawl round her shoulders, blood on her nightdress.

It was only a nightmare, Una said to herself as she dressed. But by the time she was lighting the stove, the dream had transported itself into a memory, held in place by time. She must have been twelve. The memory became sharper, and the harder she pushed at its blade, the deeper it cut. She gazed out at the yard with its light dusting of snow and knew with absolute clarity who she’d last seen wearing Grandma’s shawl: her daughter Sorina.

One small crack appeared in the walls of righteousness that she had meticulously built over the years, lie upon lie until the past became acceptable. Now the walls crumbled to dust. Why hadn’t she listened to her sister, to Misha? They had both tried to warn her, to protect her, and she had given her daughter to that monster. She rocked back and forth as one memory overlaid another.

I did that. Pig stupid. I did that. Pig ugly. And the tears that threatened to demolish her suddenly froze. She saw exactly what she was going to do.