At the doorway, she summons the courage to turn. ‘Perhaps, in summer, I can find a replacement, someone to help Lijsbeth with the laundry.’

Cornelis smiles politely but his eyes convey the truth: by summer, the offer will be gone.

The rest of the day passes in a daze. Disappointment haunts a hollow space inside Anna’s stomach. Refusing to acknowledge it, she scrubs and irons and sluices water across the tiles until her arms ache and her back protests. By the time darkness falls, the emptiness has been replaced by real hunger. Walking home, her thoughts are consumed by visions of the hard bread she will slather with cheese and devour in one swift bite.

The house is unlit and filled with an eerie silence. Lighting a lamp, she hears a faint whine and traces the sound to the stairwell where she discovers Wolfert stuck halfway between the floors. He whimpers when he sees her and turns a clumsy half-circle, trying to disguise the foetid evidence of the long hours of incarceration. She falls on him, whispering soothing comforts and although her back feels as if it might snap, manages to help him downstairs. Settling him before the hearth, she scatters a handful of crusts for his supper. A gentle scratching in the floor overhead makes her glance up. New mice in the walls? Or perhaps Lijsbeth returned early and took to her bed.

She climbs the stairs and pushes open the door.

At first, she thinks her sister is asleep. A lantern burns low beside the bed, illuminating Lijsbeth’s sharp nose and wide eyes, her parted lips. In her fevered delirium, she has hooked the bedsheet up to her chin and it falls in creamy waves around her arms and legs. With her hands knotted in the folds, she looks like a ship’s figurehead, destined for some distant sea. Anna rips the sheet away, exposing her sister’s body, still clothed in the blood-stained nightdress she wore this morning. A sour smell erupts and Anna’s legs begin to tremble. The shaking spreads, moving from her stomach into her chest until she is curled inwards, like a creature quaking in a storm-tossed shell.

4

Jo