‘You see, I had to do something. The old woman was going to take Edith away. I couldn’t let her – she was my daughter, my property, not hers. You’re not Edith. You look like her but you’re a demon. Please, demon, it was an accident.’

The cabinet maker jumped when Edith spoke.

‘No, it was no accident. Even then, you’d already made your deal with the butcher that I should be bride meat.’

‘I gave that woman a roof over her head, food, a place to stay. I indulged her by letting Edith call her Grandmother.’

‘Without her and her stories, we would have been penniless. I go away for the winter and look at you, you lazy drunk. I’m not going to stay long but while I’m here this place will be clean and tidy. And you will clean and tidy it.’

He scratched his head, trying to make something work in his wine-soaked brain. Finally, he said, ‘What kind of demon are you?’

‘An angry one. And I am Edith.’

‘No,’ he said backing away. ‘She’s dead. But I grant you, demon, she isn’t buried because her remains haven’t been found. You are one of the bloodless. Edith doesn’t talk.’

She stared at him. ‘You will clean the house,’ she said, and her father scurried away to fetch the broom and a pail.

By sunset, he had swept the floors, washed the windows and scrubbed the table. Never once had Edith taken her eyes off him or lifted a hand to help.

‘I need a drink,’ said the cabinet maker.

Edith stood and blocked the door. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re not going out tonight to beg for alcohol.’

‘I can’t do without a drink, I can’t,’ he said.

‘I know that,’ said Edith. She went into her room and lifted the two floorboards under which she had kept a small supply of lentils, barley and oats, and five bottles of plum brandy. She had always been fearful that one day there might be nothing in the store cupboard.

She put one bottle on the table with two glasses. For the first time that afternoon, the cabinet maker’s eyes lit up.

‘You’ve never been grateful for anything, have you?’ she said.

Her father’s hands shook as the glass found his lips. He looked up at her and said, ‘I’m grateful for the plum brandy.’

The butcher called a meeting of the elders and told them that they must agree to ban anyone from going near the cabinet maker’s daughter. For all his bombast there was a sense of unease among the elders, as if something more than snow had melted.

‘Remember what happened to the bear hunters?’ the butcher said.