Not long after Edith arrived home, she found the cabinet maker’s bed hadn’t been slept in. All that day a party was out searching for him. When Edith returned in the afternoon she was struck by the stillness of the house, a stillness it had never possessed before, and she knew that the old fool was dead.

Perhaps that was what had woken her so early. It had nothing do with the butcher. She sat on the verandah steps. The hens already seemed plumper and one had laid an egg as if in gratitude for being rescued.

Edith hadn’t eaten all day and was thinking about supper when Georgeta came into the yard with a basket of food and wine.

‘I heard your father is missing. I’ve brought you this,’ she said. ‘It’s long overdue. I would’ve come sooner if I hadn’t been looking after my son.’

Edith took the basket into the kitchen, found two glasses and opened the bottle. The day had been a rehearsal for the summer to come and they sat on the verandah as the sun lingered, golden in its warmth.

‘I wonder what your grandmother would have made of all this,’ said Georgeta.

‘Not much,’ said Edith.

‘She would have been very proud of you. It took courage to do what you did.’

‘Not as much as it took Una to do what she did.’

‘Una will get better in time,’ said Georgeta. ‘But I don’t know about Sorina.’

‘How is your son?’ Edith asked.

‘He recovered almost the minute he heard the butcher was dead. He confessed he’d lied, that he’d never seen you as one of the bloodless. He told me the butcher had made him say those things. He refuses to tell me more and, if I’m honest, I don’t want to know. But my husband says we must talk and that is rare. Usually it’s he who talks and I who listen.’

Edith put her feet up on the carved balustrade of the verandah and said,

‘I wasn’t related to the woman I called Grandmother.’

‘I know,’ said Georgeta. ‘She told me.’

‘Did she tell you anything else?’

‘That she had a fearful row with the cabinet maker, that she said over her dead body would you marry the butcher.’

‘Go on,’ said Edith.

‘Before she came here, she lived down the mountain and made her living going from village to village telling stories. In the summer she would travel with the circus. She was very fond of your mother.’

‘Did you meet my mother?’