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Evelyn wrapped the boy in a blanket and went looking for some clean clothes for him. She came back with a pair of old jeans and a jumper that had been her mother’s.

“No point you running off now,” she said. “Absolutely nothing outside that wall, is there?”

It was the same reassurance she’d always given Lily, but posed to the boy, the question no longer sounded rhetorical. His very presence disproved the theory. He just looked at her.

“Come on,” she said. “Skin a rabbit.”

He flinched.

“Silly thing.”

She raised his arms and peeled off his T-shirt. His chest brittle and pale and ribbed like a fossil. She watched him as he dressed and asked questions that ranged no further than what was in front of them. Would he like more water? Was he tired? Was he cold? She thought of other things but knew they were too large to address right now, too large perhaps to put into any kind of words.

She went and made him a cup of mint tea, but he wouldn’t touch it.

Lily eventually returned. She stood on the threshold but came no further.

“What on earth are you doing?” she said.

“Well, he’s not going back in the icehouse, is he? I’ll turn my back for five minutes and you’ll be wringing his neck again.”

“So what if I do?”

“We need to look after him.”

Lily stared at her, her mouth slack with disbelief. “Need to? Excuse me?”

“Please, Lils. Please hear me out.” Evelyn got to her feet. Behind her she heard the boy retreating under the blanket.

“He could help us.”

“He could kill us,” said her sister.

“He won’t kill us.”

“I have your guarantee, do I?”

“Yes.”

Lily scoffed.

“He could help us with the garden,” said Evelyn. “He could look after everything when we’re gone. The bees, the beds, the orchard. He could look after us, and Mama.”

“You need your brains testing, Evelyn.”

“Look at him,” said Evelyn. “He’s not dangerous.”

They both turned. The boy had gathered the blanket beneath his chin, and his pale head seemed to float disembodied above it. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes seemed bruised with fatigue. Lily folded her arms and shook her head.

“We don’t know where he’s been. He’s probably poisonous.”

“He just needs looking after. A wash. Something to eat.”

“Well, apparently you’ve already seen to that. The little girl’s room! I’m not an idiot, Evie.”

Evelyn went over to her sister and took her hand, but Lily snatched it back. Evelyn tried again, more gently, and this time Lily didn’t move. Evelyn felt her sister’s pulse through the thin skin of her wrists.

“We talked about this,” she said. “We’re getting old, Lily.”

They were silent for a long time. Lily examined the fingers on her other hand. Evelyn knew they were sore from what had happened in the grotto.

“What’s your point?” she said.

“My point is we can’t look after the garden forever. What’ll happen when we’ve gone to be with Mama? Someone needs to carry on with the work. Otherwise what are we doing here? Why are we working at all? The work comes first. The work comes before everything. Mama always said that.”

“We won’t be with Mama anytime soon.”

“But we will. One day. And even before that someone will need to take over. I don’t feel on top of things even now. And your joints being what they are…”

“I can’t help my joints.”

“I know that, Lily.”

Lily let her arms drop and stamped her feet. “I don’t want him here,” she said. “I hate him. Look at him. I’ve got pins and needles all over.” She paused. “I can’t remember my routine, Evie. I’ve been trying and trying for the past few days, and I can’t remember half of the steps. He’s completely thrown me.”

“But he’s here now.”

“Thanks to you! I don’t want him getting under our feet. Eating our food. Like having a bloody animal in the house!”

“You always wanted an animal in the house and Mama wouldn’t let you.”

“Don’t start , Evie.”

Evelyn saw the bruise on her sister’s forehead from when she had fallen in the grotto, and she suddenly felt as if there was something alien about her. The boy had made everything seem alien, in fact. The world made new.

“Will you think about it? Please, Lils.”

“Think about what?”

“Keeping him.”

“Think about it, she says! I haven’t been doing anything but that for the last three days!”

She turned away and went past the boy toward the pile of clothes, selected the largest and most elaborate of their mother’s ball gowns, and threw it over her head.

“I need to practice,” she said, and went out again into the day.

The kitchen was very quiet in her absence. When Evelyn turned back to the boy, it seemed he had been watching them both closely. A long time passed. Birdsong and insects outside, jarring and unreal. Eventually he lowered the blanket from his nose and mouth and he cleared his throat and said:

“I think she’s going to kill me.”

He spoke quietly and deliberately, as if unused to it. Such a strange voice. Like a woman’s in its timbre, but not in its soul. Not at all.

It was some time before Evelyn answered. How long had it been since she’d had a conversation with anyone other than her sister? She felt as if to do so was to offer up some part of herself that she would not recover. To offer up a part of Lily, too, perhaps. She waited and thought. When the words came they were not the words she had expected.

“Don’t worry about her,” she said. “She’s just in a bad mood, that’s all. You surprised us. We don’t get many surprises here.”

And that was the end of it. They looked at each other, and the silence poured back into the spaces around them. She filled a cup with cold tea and gave it to him, and this time he took it. He drew a deep and shivering breath.

“Are you cold?” she asked.

The boy shook his head.

“Do you want something to eat?”

He shook his head again, then lay on the floor and pulled the blanket over his head and curled up like a grub.

She studied the shape of him. Boys did become men, Lily was right about that, but what her sister actually had in mind, she did not know. A cocoon, perhaps. A chrysalis. Poor Lily, so resolutely ignorant. But then how much did Evelyn really understand? Her mother had only given her the scantest information on the ways of men and women before she had sealed her lips against such things, and now Evelyn could not deny a perverse desire to learn firsthand, to feed and water the grub and see what it might grow into.