I stop. I ask over my shoulder, ‘Why d’you say that?’

‘There’s not one new horse in the stable.’

She got that off her chest. Indeed she did, but let her have that small consolation in all its pettiness. I enter the hall and my gaze collides with the Farmhand. He is hanging around next to the wall as if it were his job. This little act gets him a real house. If there were any justice in the world, he would be living in a hole in the ground with smoke vents, and spend his days burrowing away deep down in the earth. I stare at him for a while before I snarl, ‘Why are you skulking here?’

‘You can say what you like,’ he says in his irritatingly slow way. ‘But I’ve never been caught skulking.’

‘Anyone’d think you were standing there with your ears pricked up, listening to other people’s talk.’

He bares his blackened gums. ‘Not possible. I’ve been deaf at least since you were fresh out of swaddling clothes.’

‘In other words, you’ve been deaf for a long time.’

‘Or maybe I can still hear perfectly well.’

He should be flogged. He has the nerve to stand there in front of me with his hat on. The Devil knows why everyone here esteems him so. What strings did he pull in his day? That must all have happened before my time and then been handed on, just like the bad blood they say one generation passes to the next. Thank God the Farmhand’s blood has been stopped up. Then again, he could have a brother he has kept quiet about, maybe even a whole brood of uncouth men, fellows who stand around in dirty boots on rugs bought by others in Vaasa, lacking the manners to remove their smelly, ragged hats.

I glare at him until he finally turns and hobbles outside. I’m tempted to speed him up with a kick. They say sons inherit the sins of their fathers. My father’s sin was taking that shameless rat into this house, leaving me to shoulder the burden.

Mother has obviously been listening, for she slams the drawing-room door shut behind my back.