Edith stifled the urge to gag. She refused to give the men the satisfaction of seeing her body’s utter revulsion at this invasion, at this pointless search for her words.

‘Say “Aah”.’

Silence.

Watched intently by the butcher and her father, the doctor felt her neck and took her pulse.

‘Well?’ demanded the butcher as if there might be something visible only to a doctor’s eye that prevented Edith from speaking and might just as simply be cured. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

Edith could see the doctor carefully choosing his words.

‘It may well be she has aphasia, a condition that…’

‘I’m not interested,’ said the butcher. ‘Give her one of your tonics. And it better work.’

He strode out of the house, hitting the wall in frustration.

The doctor’s cushion face was embroidered with beads of sweat. He rummaged in his bag and gave Edith a bottle of tonic.

‘I sincerely hope you find your voice – for all our sakes,’ he said as he left.

There is no medicine that could cure the pain that is frozen in me, thought Edith as she poured the tonic into the slop bucket.

It was on the evening of the second day that Lena came to visit Edith. She had been Edith’s best friend since childhood. She came to her with a heart full of words that she longed for someone to hear; all of them a surprise.

Two years ago, autumn, the time of romance. The miller’s son had come courting to the cabinet maker’s house, his coin wrapped in ribbon, a token of his love. He asked Edith to be his bride and, being refused, went straight to Lena and on St Catherine’s Day they had married. Lena’s mother was a widow and both families were pleased with the match. Since then, there had been a distance between the two girls. Edith suspected that the miller’s son, a dough-faced youth, hadn’t hesitated to tell Lena that his first choice had been Edith. And now without a voice to ask if it was so, Edith had no way of knowing. She had hardly seen Lena since the harvest supper. Like many of Edith’s friends, she stayed away, embarrassed by a silence they feared they might have contributed to.

‘Is Misha back?’ Lena asked.

Edith shook her head and wondered why her friend seemed so worried. Perhaps she too had asked Misha to bring something from the town.

‘It will be dark soon,’ Lena said. ‘Do you think something’s happened?’ She came into the kitchen and stood by the stove. ‘It’s cold. I think this is going to be a brutal winter…’

Her words tumbled out of her, too fast. In all she had to say there was nothing of any interest. In an attempt to stop Lena talking, Edith put her finger to her lips.