‘Yes, once. She was pretty – not dark like you but fair, pale as snow. Your grandmother took your mother in when she left the cabinet maker. She returned to him not out of love but out of guilt. He pleaded with her, promised to be a better man. The spring before you were born, there was talk that he had another woman in a village not far from here and that summer your grandmother took your mother travelling with her. She craved a baby as a starving man wants for food and, when she came back, she was pregnant.’

‘Perhaps I did come from the goblin market,’ said Edith.

‘It doesn’t matter that your grandmother wasn’t related to you. It was she who brought you up. You are a remarkable woman in no small part due to her. Blood or no blood.’

Three days later the cabinet maker hadn’t been found and the village elders and the mayor agreed that the search for him should be called off.

As one of the elders said, ‘The mountain gives back its dead when it’s ready and no amount of looking will change that.’

Edith was surprised at how little she felt; just an acceptance that the cabinet maker was gone. All she could hope for was that death had met him kindly and she suspected it had.

In the space between the butcher’s death and his burial, villagers began to talk about him and what he had done to them. They came to Edith’s house to watch Misha make the coffin; the sight of it enough to reassure them the butcher wasn’t coming back.

‘The earth won’t weep for his grave,’ said a farmer.

Two days before the butcher was to be buried the blacksmith came to collect the coffin and bring Flora to see Edith. She was carrying a parcel.

‘Better than he deserves,’ said the blacksmith as they loaded the coffin onto the cart.

Misha went with him to the forge, leaving Flora and Edith sitting outside. Edith lifted her face to the sun.

‘This time next week we will be married, and I will see our daughter again,’ said Flora. ‘Oh Edith – this is a new beginning.’

Edith thought back to last spring, just before she met Demetrius, when she felt it to be full of new beginnings. She enjoyed hearing Flora speak; a tumble of words colliding with one another, accompanied by a bush full of sparrows arguing, each with a chorus for Flora’s happiness.

‘This is for you,’ said Flora. ‘I charged the butcher far too much for the wedding gown.’ Edith opened the parcel to find a dress and a long travelling coat. ‘I thought you should come and stay with us. I’ve written down the address. And don’t forget to bring your embroidery.’

‘Flora, they are too beautiful. Thank you. But…’

‘No buts. Just remember to bring some of your embroidery with you.’

‘Why?’