No, because it brings me no comfort and, for me, unlike you, there’s no escape. What is it like to live in town and make enough to support yourself? The priest says that ‘seamstress’ is just another word for ‘prostitute’. I don’t think that’s your story. But there’s something – something hidden.

‘Was it your idea – the wedding dress?’

Edith shook her head.

‘Then it was the butcher’s. But why?’ said Flora. ‘Can’t you convince him that you don’t want it?’

Edith shook her head again.

It was then that Edith understood something about silence. And she began to listen to every word Flora said. She was right – the butcher should have known better than to suggest a modern wedding dress. Edith hadn’t thought how much of a rebellious act against the old ways such a dress would be.

‘People are talking. They say you’ve bewitched the butcher. They say Demetrius was a gypsy.’

Flora picked up her tape measure with a sigh. She took from her basket a folder of fashion plates, fine ladies with impossible shapes wearing wedding gowns. ‘White is all the fashion,’ she said as she spread the pictures before them.

Edith looked at the pictures and saw herself as a traveller preparing for a long journey, waiting for the sound of the violin so she might put her right foot forward.

‘These gowns can be adapted to any design.’

Edith nodded and without so much as a glance pointed to the fashion plate nearest her.

‘You don’t care, do you?’ said Flora.

Edith shrugged. No, she didn’t care.

‘The world is changing,’ said Flora. ‘Why should the village elders tell us what we can wear? I’ll make you a most beautiful wedding gown.’

The seamstress’s sewing machine was reported to the village elders. The blacksmith’s house and forge stood well away from the other houses in the village, which could only mean that whoever had heard it had gone out of their way to do so. That the seamstress was making a wedding dress for the cabinet maker’s daughter was considered by the elders enough of an outrage to act upon. The girl must have bewitched the butcher for he would never have allowed it.

They went to the cabinet maker who was asleep. Edith had no intention of inviting them into the parlour as was the custom when dignitaries of the village paid a visit. Instead she ushered them into the kitchen. They stood together, these ancient ravens, these guardians of the old way of life that made progress almost impossible. If something hadn’t been done before there was no need for it to be done now. The butcher, the most senior elder, was not among them.

‘Where’s your father?’ a pencil-thin elder asked.