Carmel remembered the squeak of her feet in the wet jelly sandals, the feel of cool rain on her scratched skin. She and Imelda carried their harvest in plump and bleeding white plastic bags and their fingerprints were dyed a livid purple, like nature’s own criminals. And she did not know if this was a happy memory, or just a landscape – the far hill gone tawny with bracken, the two girls in bright cones of yellow under a heavy sky. Somewhere over there, their father standing with his back to them, doing something.
