‘No, Mal, please.’

‘We’re in the same bed, aren’t we? And we like each other.’

‘Please don’t.’

‘What are you, expecting to be married first?’

‘No, I just –’

‘Come on, I see the way you look at me. It’s not fair acting coy about it now.’

She hadn’t wanted it to happen this way, but she was bleary with the drink and couldn’t get her thoughts in a straight line. ‘Please just take it out before you –’

‘I’m not even going to put it in you. Stay there, on your front.’ For a long, strange moment, he’d just knelt behind her, tugging at himself until he’d spilled over her rear. Then he’d gone to fetch the dirty tea towel from the oven door to wipe her off, and that was it. ‘No danger this way, is there?’ he’d said. Nearly every night thereafter, they’d enacted this routine, apart from when she’d put him in her hand so he would finish sooner. She’d become so used to it that she would put a clean white flannel underneath her pillow when she made the bed up of an evening, and a pot of Vaseline.

*

She was thinking of this now, the shame of it, as she approached the north field in the wind. From this end of the yard, the buds of rye looked greener in the light, which she assumed to be a sign of their good health – it wasn’t much, but she was glad of it. The parcel’s edge was sticking out of her coat pocket. Before she left the yard, she took the chance to tuck it in the waistband of her trousers, hiding it beneath the tails of her blouse. She wiped her mucky fingers on the grass. No sooner had she hung her coat up in the hallway, she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. ‘I hate to rush you, Joyce, but we’ve got plenty to be getting on with …’ It was Mr Mayhood, passing through. His eyes were on the pages of a ledger, which was resting in his hand the way a vicar holds a Bible.

‘Won’t be long,’ she said. ‘I stepped right in a puddle, so I’d better change my trousers.’

‘Well, go on – be quick.’ He went off with the ledger, calling back, ‘Your brother’s at his desk already.’

She managed to get straight up to her room and shut the door. The only hiding place that she could think of was inside the lining of her suitcase. She’d tried to fit the other parcels in it, weeks ago, but they’d made too big a bulge. The case was stowed above her wardrobe. Its silky fabric had gone baggy underneath the lid and she’d already worked a hole into the pouch on the outside. When she slid the parcel in, it sank down well enough that nobody would see its shape. She was halfway out the door before she realized she hadn’t changed her trousers and she had to pull a crumpled pair out of the laundry basket.