Later, she remembered everything except the walk to her father’s house. No one was awake. She’d gone straight to the cupboard where he kept his hunting gun and the bullets. She had loaded the gun the way he had taught her. A memory itched her mind. She was a child, she’d asked the butcher if he loved her.

‘You and your sister – both of you are disappointments,’ he’d said. ‘Your mother didn’t even have the strength to give me a son.’

He never answered my question, she thought. The butcher’s bedroom was on the ground floor. She’d opened the bedroom door just as she had in her dream.

Now she stood at the foot of her father’s bed.

‘What do you want?’ said the butcher, waking. He saw the gun and sat up with a start. ‘Put it down, Una.’

For once, she didn’t do what her father told her. She pointed the gun at his chest and pulled the trigger.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Best China

The second Sorina heard the gunshot, she was wide awake, every part of her alert, her heart pounding.

She went silently down the stairs and stopped in the hall. She could see the outline of her mother, framed in the doorway of the butcher’s bedroom.

‘Mother?’ Sorina said into the darkness.

Una didn’t turn to her. ‘I’ve killed you,’ she said as if to herself. Sorina crept closer. ‘I meant to hit your chest.’

‘Mother,’ said Sorina again.

Still Una didn’t appear to know she was there. ‘The gun threw me back.’

Now Sorina could see beyond her to where the butcher sat bolt upright in bed, the top of his head blown off, a halo of red splattered on the bedroom wall.

Sorina stared in wonder at the sight. Was he really dead? She felt her whole being fill with excitement. He was dead.

‘The shawl,’ said Una, and Sorina jumped. ‘I saw you wearing that terrible shawl. I should have known – I should have killed him then.’

‘Come away, Mother.’

‘Is he dead?’

‘Yes, Mother.’

Sorina couldn’t take her eyes off the gruesome sight. The butcher’s eyes were wide open, his mouth too, his face a carnival mask.

‘Good,’ said Una. ‘That’s good.’

Sorina tried to coax her mother into the kitchen.

‘No. I must stay here in case he comes back, one of the bloodless like his mother.’

That thought frightened Sorina. She had often heard the butcher talking to his mother. Sorina had to think. She wished her mind wasn’t so slow. She was so used to taking orders from the butcher that now she had no will of her own.

Then the image of Edith in her fur hat with the antlers came to her. Yes, she thought, the only person in the whole village to have disobeyed the butcher. The wild woman would know what to do.