I go out into the back garden and find the thickest bush and crawl into the cold shadow underneath it. The cold is nice on my hot face.

The back door clicks shut and Ma’s black rubber shoes scuff down the steps and across the grass and stop next to the bush. She drops down on her hands and knees. She has on big purple rubber gloves, like the packing ladies wear when they clean off the packing tables at the end of the day.

‘Blossom,’ she says. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t like it here,’ I say. ‘There’s nuthin’ I can do right.’

‘You’re smart. You’ll pick it up,’ Ma says.

‘I’m already smart about farm things. I know what I have to do, and I work hard, and nobody bosses me round or looks at me like I’m stupid,’ I say and wrap my arms around my knees.

‘But here you earn cold hard cash, and the Pasquales don’t mean to be bossy. They just like things how they like things,’ Ma says. ‘Come have some breakfast and help me wash the dishes.’ She waves a purple glove at me.

I shake my head. ‘It’s not even important. Esmeralda can pick up her own clothes. Mr Pasquale can put his own knives and forks on the table. Back home, if me and Mags don’t do our job the trees suffer, the fruit suffers. What we do is important.’

‘You, me and Ivy,’ Ma says, ‘we’re a team. We’re the team that keeps the Pasquales going, keeps their house clean, their food cooked and their child cared for.’

I crawl out and look into Ma’s dark eyes. I take her purple glove in my hand. ‘They don’t care about you, Ma. They don’t care that you’re sick every morning, just that someone brings them their stupid fried pink pig meat. Come home. You got a bit of money to get some medicine if you need it. Come home to our shed and have the baby and let me and Mags and Gramps look after you for a while. We are better than a team. We are a family.’ I peel off her purple glove and turn over her worn wrinkled hand, rest it in mine, run my fingers over her short and splitting nails.

‘And after that? After we get through a couple of winters and there’s five mouths to feed and no money left?’ Ma asks.

‘I’ll be a bee, and Mags will be in charge of pests or have a better job—’

‘And Danny? What about Danny? We’re going to have this baby together, and he can’t live at the orchard. He’s only ever lived in real houses before.’ Ma pulls her hand out of mine and looks across the yard as if she’s looking at a different world to the one she’s sitting in.

‘The Ape? He’s gonna take your money for himself.’

‘Peony! You don’t know nuthin’. You’re too young to understand,’ she says.

‘He hit me, Ma. He hit you. He’s gonna hit you again and he’s gonna hit the baby and he—’

Ma stands up. ‘Peony!’ She hurries back across the grass, then stops and turns back. ‘He’s made a promise to change, to look after me and the baby, and I have to give him a chance.’

I scowl at her coz she’s just being stupid. She goes in the back door, then yells out, ‘Come get your breakfast or miss out!’ and the door clicks shut.

So I go back in and sit at the bench and try the smelly white stuff and it’s sour and weird and smells like the little room next to the kitchen did when Ma was vomiting. I don’t get so much to eat coz we’re sharing the stuff on the bench and Ivy knocks it back like a starving cocky. She knocks back one of the opened cans of bubbly drink from the fridge, which I could only sip at coz it was too fizzy and too sweet.

‘Get upstairs and tell Miss Esmeralda her car will be here in ten minutes,’ Ivy says to me between noisy sucks at the second can.

I don’t say nothing, just get up and leave Ma and Ivy to it and stomp up the stairs to Esmeralda’s room.

Even before I can touch the door she’s yelling, ‘Go away!’

‘Shut up!’ I yell back.