‘Rosie!’ the fat lady says like she’s telling Ma off. ‘Where you been? I’m run off my feet trying to keep up with everything upstairs and down!’

‘Sorry,’ Ma says and jerks her head at me. ‘We ran into a problem.’

‘This is your daughter?’ she asks. ‘Why’s she all banged up?’

Ma nods. ‘Jumped out the window of the car.’ She lowers her head towards me. ‘Peony, say hello to Ivy.’ She pushes me in the middle of my back like I’m supposed to know how to say hello in proper manners.

I step up and hold out my hand like I seen Foreman and Gramps do on the farm. ‘How ya going, Ivy?’ I say.

Ivy holds her hands up to show her bloody palms and I drop my handshake hand.

‘She’s never gonna pass for fourteen, Rosie. What’re you thinking?’ Ivy says.

‘She’s strong and she’s smart,’ Ma says.

‘And she’s dirty,’ Ivy says, and points at my feet spilling dust on her white tiles, toes manky with dried blood.

Ma sighs. She drags me through a door at the side of the kitchen. It’s full of big white machines and piles of folded clothes. In one corner is a small bed, made up nicely with white sheets, and in the other corner behind half a wall is a toilet. There’s a door at the back to another room.

‘Why’s she tying that dead thing down?’ I whisper, looking back past Ma to Ivy grunting as she wraps the meat in string and ties it off.

‘Shh!’ Ma says.

There’s a big silver basin next to the white machines, and Ma shoves a plug in and fills it. Steam rises and I lean over the sink and swish my fingers around. It’s warm. Warm straight out of the wall. I open the cupboard below the basin, expecting to see a little fire going in there to heat the water, but no, it’s just full of bright-coloured bottles and buckets and rags.

‘Peony, don’t go poking around in stuff,’ Ma says and shuts the cupboard. ‘Get your clothes off and get in that sink.’

‘What?’ I say.

She drops one eyebrow. ‘You heard.’

I peel out of my shorts and my undies and my T-shirt, stand on the stool and swing one leg up and into the water. It burns and stings my toes, but before I can pull it out again, Ma’s hoisting my arse up and dumping me into the sink.

I sit there, with my knees up by my chin as she scrubs my skin with a rough brush and soaps up my face and hair, and washes everything out again. Slowly the stinging of each little graze dies with the heat of the water. She scrubs each of my feet so hard they start bleeding again and when she lifts me out to stand on the cold white tiles I watch the blood make streaks and swirls in the puddles dripping from my body.

‘Dry yourself,’ Ma orders and wraps a fluffy blue towel around me. She hurries to the bed and slides a cardboard box out from under it. On top are some nicely folded clothes that I’ve seen her wear, and under that is my best clothes from when I left her getting on the bus and streaked across the field back to Gramps. Back to Gramps, promising him I’d never leave again. I suck in a deep breath, coz a promise is a promise, and crying like a toddler won’t get my promise done.