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Lily was the first to notice something was amiss when she woke. She sat up and banged her head on the underside of the table, then crawled out, her face creased with pain.

“Looks very clean in here,” she said. “Have you been tidying for our visitors?”

Evelyn sat quite calmly in her wicker chair and tugged at a hangnail. She had not slept at all and felt strangely cleansed by fatigue.

Lily looked askance at her and went over to where she had once shared her bed with Evelyn.

“Where are all my clothes?”

“Packed,” said Evelyn. “His, too.”

“Packed?”

“I think it’s time you left.”

Lily went looking around the kitchen and then opened the kitchen door, and there, standing on the gravel, were two hessian sacks containing all their clothing and a few meager provisions. Evelyn watched her sister poking around in each one, pulling out dresses, dungarees, her ball gown, her sun hat, one pair of sunglasses. Lily looked up, speechless. She slid her arm farther down into the sack and froze. Evelyn knew what she had found and felt some satisfaction as Lily stood up and produced a ballet pump, cut neatly in half with the garden shears.

“You’re a sod,” said Lily. “A perfect sod.”

“There’s food and water for a few days.”

“You’ve lost it. You’ve finally lost your mind.”

“I found the almanac.”

Lily dropped the severed shoe into the top of the open bag. “You did, did you?”

“Enough of it, anyway. I think you’ve made it perfectly clear what you think of me, and Mama, and the garden.”

“Don’t get all sanctimonious on me now. You hardly ever look at it these days. You said yourself it was all out of kilter. I’m sorry, but I didn’t think we needed it.” She pointed past her sister to where the boy was stirring, woken by their raised voices. “We’ve got him now. He knows this whole place like the back of his hand.”

“The house as well?”

“I’ve said I’m sorry,” said Lily, dismissing the question. “Yes. I should have asked you. But I only needed a few pages, and you were in such a foul mood. You’re always in a foul mood.”

“Of course, why shouldn’t everyone spend their days like you, Sissie? Dancing and painting and playing like a bloody five-year-old.”

Lily seemed stung by “Sissie.” Evelyn never used the term, and when she did, she felt as if she was reclaiming something.

The boy came to the kitchen door and slipped outside. He stared at the bags.

“All right,” said Lily. “You’ve made your point.”

“I don’t have a point,” said Evelyn. “I want you both to leave.”

Lily looked at her for a long time, then gave a laugh that sounded frail and not far from tears.

“You’re serious.”

“I am.”

“You can’t make us.”

“I can if I have to. I thought you wanted to leave anyway? Go and meet his friend. What was it? A chat and cup of tea with someone other than your dreadful sister? Well, your wish has been granted.”

Evelyn felt as if someone else were saying the words. That she had crossed over a line into some unknown territory, and there was no going back, because she was too proud, too stubborn, too much her mother’s daughter.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Lily.

“It’s all right,” said the boy.

“It’s not all right!”

“We’ll go.”

Lily looked aghast at him and then at Evelyn. “Traitors! Both of you!”

“If your sister doesn’t want us here, then we should leave,” said the boy. “We’ll be OK.”

“Where will we go?”

“We can try and find my friend. I’d rather not be here when the others come, anyway. I don’t want to go back.”

Evelyn felt a renewed surge of terror at the idea of anyone arriving while she was alone in the garden. But she would not go back on her decision. Besides, if the boy was gone, they might not come at all. And if there was a storm, they might not even reach the garden in the first place.

She was aware that she was trembling and that her face was bloodless, so she made a good show of straightening her back and jutting her chin at them both.

“I have work to do,” she said. “Don’t take anything else from the stores. I’ve counted it all.”

She left them and set about the watering and tried to think of nothing else besides the tasks that were before her. She ignored the dust that furred the leaves of the tomato plants. Ignored the tip of the boy’s rucksack, just visible above the surface of the lake where the reeds had buoyed it up. Ignored the terse conversation between the boy and her sister, Lily’s voice high and frantic. She clung to the work. Each moment, each act, a tiny piece of dry land. To step off it into the thoughts that swirled about was to instantly drown.

While she was checking the beehives, the boy materialized beside one of the apple trees.

“I think we will be leaving soon. I took a tarpaulin from the shed. We’ll need to shelter somewhere. I hope that’s all right.”

She looked at him through the black haze of the bees. She could barely hear him. She nodded and turned back to the hive.

“I’ll try to look after your sister,” he said.

She pretended she hadn’t heard him.

“I think I know where I’m going.”

She studied one of the frames and remembered something her mother had said. Yes, she thought, just like the drones. Eats and eats and fattens himself up, then on to another colony without doing a lick of work.

He had worked, though. He could have worked for years to come.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and waited a while for her to turn around again. By the time she did, he was gone.

—

When Evelyn returned to the house at midday, the two hessian bags were no longer there and there was no sign of her sister or the boy. A crushing silence all through the garden and the birdsong somehow harsh and grating.

She’d had thoughts for years, decades, maybe her entire life, about Lily dying. Not just thoughts but wishes. Coming from a desire that her sister would leave her alone for once, would stop her joking and her complaining, would stop always seeking to be the center of attention. She had wished for her own death, too, so that Lily could see how much she missed her older sister, how much she needed her. But it was always a child’s version of death, not an adult’s. The kind of death one returned from, with lessons learned and differences patched up. She knew now that it was this kind of death she had wished for the boy and her sister, though she worried she had sentenced them to something far worse.