It’s still dark when Ivy jerks my ear. ‘On your feet, lazy bones!’

I slap away her pinching fingers and pull the blanket over my head.

‘The Pasquales need breakfast, hop to it!’ Ivy shouts.

‘Blossom,’ Ma groans at me like we’re friends again.

I sit up and rub the fuzz from my eyes. Ma’s sitting on the bed hunched over a bowl, heaving air and drool.

‘You sick?’ I ask.

Ma takes a deep breath. ‘It’s the baby. Must be another girl. I was like this with you and Magnolia.’

‘The baby makes you sick?’ I ask.

She holds the small mound of her stomach in one hand and nods. ‘Please help Ivy in the kitchen. I can’t even smell food in the morning.’

I breathe out and screw my lips to the side so she knows I’m not happy about my new life. But I get up, use the toilet and then go find a cloth, rinse it under the cold tap at the sink and lay it on her forehead.

Ma smiles, then she looks at my feet and all around on the floor. ‘Blossom, where are your shoes and socks?’

‘I left them at the back door,’ I say.

Ma nods. ‘In rich folks’ houses they expect you to keep your feet covered and your shoes perfectly clean.’

‘Cha!’ I say, like I’m annoyed at all the rules, and hurry through to the kitchen. I throw open the back door and run out.

‘Peony! The flies!’ Ivy yells after me as I duck around the side of the house and find my shoes and socks in the bushes. I’m back sitting on the doorstep, pulling on my socks by the time she gets her head out the door.

‘Come on. Stop mucking about,’ she says.

She makes me cart food and plates and knives and forks from the kitchen to the table, then comes out and rearranges them like the Pasquales don’t even have their own arms to reach for things.

Then I’m back to the kitchen to stand over the hot pan as pink bits of pig fry and spit under my nose and I turn them over with a pair of tongs. I’ve never tasted pink meat before so I pick up a bit and give it a lick. My tongue burns.

‘Rosie! Rosie!’

I drop the meat back in the pan. Mrs Pasquale’s heels click across the floor outside the kitchen door and she bursts in. ‘Peony, get me the Greek yoghurt, put it in the black jug, the tall one, you know the one,’ she says, as I lick pig grease from my lips.

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I say, but I don’t know about black jugs or Greek thingies, so I stand there, like the stupidest new pest who don’t even know where to find a caterpillar or how to sharpen their bit of fence wire to stab the beetles through the back. I stand there with my face burning. I burn hot at Ma for bringing me here to a place I can’t fit in. Hot at Mrs Pasquale for being so bossy. Hot at Esmeralda for not helping me properly last night when I had a chance to leave.

‘Peony! Now!’ Mrs Pasquale claps her hands at me like I’m a naughty chook, so I turn away and open the nearest cupboard, even though I’m not supposed to go poking around in stuff. The cupboard is full of pots.

‘Gah!’ Mrs Pasquale turns and trit-trots back out to the other room. ‘Ivy!’ she screams.

Ivy bustles back in, big hips jiggling, boobs heaving up and down, and I duck around behind the kitchen bench so she can’t thwack me around the head. ‘Burning the bacon, standing round like a lump, what good are you?’ she asks.

I quick-fill my mind with all the good things I can do on the farm. All the pests I know how to catch, that time Foreman called, ‘Good bee,’ how fast I can run, Gramps’s hugs, how I can always make Mangojoy giggle and AJ smile his most excellent smile. One eye waters up.

Ivy scrapes out the pink pig meat onto a plate and shoves it at me. ‘Get that through to Mr Pasquale!’

I take it and carry it out and put it on the table in front of Mr Pasquale.

He don’t say anything about it, just keeps on talking to Mrs Pasquale. I head back to the kitchen. Esmeralda is on the stairs, her beetle-black hair shimmering as she bounces down, step to step. She smiles at me, and I sniff my nose high in the air and carry on. But back in the kitchen, Ivy shoves a tall black jug at me full of sour white thick stuff.

‘Take this out to the table,’ she says.

I take it from her and stomp back to the door. Then I stop and take some deep breaths, coz now I’m burning hot at the whole world and I want to throw this sour white stuff at the next person who looks at me.

‘Peony?’ Ma whispers.

She’s standing at the door to the little room beside the kitchen, hanging onto the doorframe and looking at me with her eyes full of worry. Probably just from throwing up so much. She don’t care about me.

I take the stupid jug of stupid stuff to the table, I don’t look at no one, and I get back to the kitchen, without looking at no one, and I go out the back door to the garden.

‘The flies!’ Ivy yells after me through the open back door.