Avó comes to visit on Sunday, much to Mina’s delight, and I am relieved when Rav uses her presence to go out on his pushbike for an hour. It is worth putting up with Avó’s thoughtless comments for a while if it means I have a little space from Rav. We might have agreed not to talk about it, and I might have told him I have accepted his apology, but I still have that unsettled feeling when I think about him knowing the history of the house and not telling me. It hasn’t helped that I have woken the last two nights with my heart pounding my chest, sure that I can hear a child crying somewhere outside, even though the baby and Mina have been sleeping. Avó sits, rocking the baby at the kitchen table, while I start to prepare the leg of lamb for dinner.

‘I can make the dinner for you, Allie,’ Avó says. ‘You should rest. You should be letting me do it.’

‘Avó, I can do the dinner. I make the dinner every night for all of us.’ I open the oven door, letting out a huge plume of hot steam into the already stifling kitchen.

‘Hmmm.’ Avó frowns, her black eyes on me as I move about the kitchen. I am about to give in and ask her to peel some potatoes, when she says, ‘That lamb won’t taste of anything you know, not if you don’t put some herbs in there.’