It reminds Solomon of his family, no different.

‘They didn’t need anyone else,’ she says softly, yet it doesn’t sound as though she felt left out, merely that she recognised it was a glorious thing. ‘They were enough company for each other. I think they had a kind of a love affair together. Just the two of them.’

This reminds Solomon of the Toolin twins. Perhaps Isabel and Tom had more in common than anyone thought.

‘Would you sit up late into the night with them? Would you take part in these parties?’ Bo asks, her eyes shining, loving the picture Laura is painting.

‘Sometimes I would stay up late with them. Even when I wasn’t supposed to be there, I was listening. It’s not exactly a large house, as you can see, and they weren’t exactly quiet.’ She laughs, that beautiful musical laugh. She bites her lip and looks at Solomon.

He looks up at her from the grass, beautiful big blue eyes that glint, a strand of hair comes loose and it falls across his eyes, over his long black eyelashes. He looks down at his equipment, moves a dial one way then back again.

‘Tell us some of the stories they told,’ Bo asks.

‘No,’ Laura says pleasantly. ‘That’s between them.’

‘But they’re not here now,’ Bo jokes, conspiratorially.

‘Yes they are.’ Laura closes her eyes and breathes in again.

Solomon smiles. He looks down at Rachel and sees her beaming, teary-eyed. Bo gives Laura a moment before continuing.

‘You were home-schooled,’ Bo prompts.

‘Gaga was home-schooled too. Her dad thought it was a waste of time to have girls educated, so he’d forbidden her from going. Her mother taught her secretly at home. She did the same with me.’

‘Do you regret missing out on the school experience?’

‘No,’ she laughs. ‘I think a lot of people are missing out on the joys of home-schooling. I remember Gaga chasing a frog around the stream; she said that Mum’s school dissected them, to teach students how they looked when they were dead. She wanted to show me how it lived.’ She bites her bottom lip again and Solomon eyes that lip, before swallowing. ‘She was a sight, running around after it. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon. I still know the anatomy of a frog.’

Bo laughs with her. Then. ‘Did you know at the time that you were a secret? That nobody knew you existed?’

‘Yes, I knew. I always knew that I was a secret. They didn’t trust people. They were wary. They said if we stuck together, we’d be okay.’

‘What do you think they were protecting you from?’

‘People.’

‘Did people hurt them?’

Silence while Laura searches for a way to answer. ‘Gaga and Mum were different people on their own. When the customers arrived, I’d hear their voices, sometimes watch from the window, and I’d barely recognise them. They wouldn’t laugh, they were robotic and to the point. There was nothing magical about them. They weren’t funny like they were at home, singing and laughing. They were serious. Sombre. Like a guard went up. It wasn’t just because it was a business; they protected themselves. They were wary of people.’

‘Your mother dropped out of school when she was young. When she was fourteen. Do you know why?’

Solomon studies Bo then. He’s positive that she knows something about it. He can see it in her. Her body has tightened, though she tries to appear relaxed, but she’s got that bit between her teeth. Bo hadn’t told Solomon anything about what she’d learned from the locals, he’d been tired when she returned, grumpy at having to leave Laura. He’d wanted to sleep immediately, while Bo was hyper, unable to relax, moving around the room, making noises that caused him to snap at her. He should have guessed at the time her behaviour was because she had learned something that would affect the documentary, but he was distracted. He is intrigued now, although his defences have gone up because Laura’s have. He doesn’t want Bo to keep digging, he feels ready to protect Laura, like he’s on the wrong side. The effect is dizzying, disorientating.

Laura stiffens. ‘Granddad died. Gaga needed Mum to help her out with the business. Granddad had been a labourer on a farm. They needed more income. So Mum left school and Gaga home-schooled her. They expanded the dressmaking and alterations business. They made medicines too. Natural remedies, which they sold at markets. Mum said children at school called them witches.’

‘Did that hurt her?’

‘No. Gaga and Mum laughed about it. They’d cackle when they were making their potions,’ she smiles, remembering.

‘Children can be cruel,’ Bo says gently. ‘What other things did children say to your mum?’

You don’t have to answer, Solomon feels like saying. Rachel is looking down now at her shoes, occasionally checking the monitor, a sign she feels uncomfortable.

‘Mum wasn’t like most other people,’ Laura says, thoughtfully, speaking slowly, choosing every word with great care. ‘Gaga made the big decisions. Mum was happy for Gaga to take the lead,’ she says, diplomatically. ‘Mum had her own way. If you ask me what some children used to say about her, then I’d say they called her slow. Mum told me that. But she wasn’t slow. It’s such a lazy word. She thought differently, had to learn things in another way, that’s all.’

When Laura’s body language starts to close up, Bo changes tack.

‘How did you end up at the Toolin cottage?’

‘My mum got sick, very sick, in 2005. We never saw doctors, Gaga and Mum didn’t believe in their medicines, they preferred to make their own natural remedies and were rarely ill, but they knew that something was seriously wrong with Mum that their medicines wouldn’t heal so they went to a doctor who referred them to hospital. She had colon cancer. She refused all hospital treatments, she said she would rather go naturally, the way she’d arrived. So me and Gaga nursed her.’

‘How old were you?’ Bo asks gently.

‘I was fourteen when she was diagnosed, she died when I was fifteen.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Bo whispers and leaves a respectful silence.

A bird flies overhead, a fly nearby. Laura mimics them both, showing her distress, as she attempts to gather herself.

‘So then it was you and Gaga here at the house. Tell me about those days.’

‘It was difficult for Gaga, because she had to run the alterations business alone. I helped her but she was still training me, and there was only so much I could do. She was having problems with her fingers, arthritis, her fingers were bending inward and she couldn’t do it any more, certainly not as fast. There were less and less customers too. Mum’s housekeeping money had helped to that point, but that wasn’t something I could do.’

‘Even at fifteen you wouldn’t deal with customers? You couldn’t step out into the world then?’

‘How would Gaga explain me suddenly appearing?’ Laura asks. ‘She couldn’t. She would try and think of ways, but it would upset her. It would make her anxious, nervous. She didn’t want to lie. She worried about tying herself up in knots, forgetting her story. She was forgetting a lot of things by then. She felt that at fifteen I was still too vulnerable, I was still a child.’

‘Where did her fear come from, Laura?’

Again that question, but this time Solomon feels it’s valid. Even he wants to know. But Laura has closed up. Bo doesn’t push.

‘Did you ever ask who your dad was?’

Solomon studies her. Laura gazes down, her eyes gleaming green, as though reflecting the long grasses she is sitting among. He wants to run his finger down her cheek, her chin, her lips. He looks away.

‘No.’ And then, as if remembering Bo’s instructions, she starts again. ‘I never asked who my dad was,’ she says gently. ‘I never asked because it was never important. I knew that whoever he was it wouldn’t make a difference. I had all the people I needed here.’

Rachel purses her lips, clearly moved.

‘What about when your mother passed away?’

‘I did wonder then, when Mum was gone, if I should have asked, because I felt like she was my only way of knowing. I suppose I can never know for sure, but I felt so strongly that Gaga wouldn’t have told me. Mum had the opportunity to tell me and decided not to, I knew Gaga would respect her word. It might not make sense, but I didn’t think about who he was very often. It wasn’t important.’

She thinks for a moment.

‘I thought about him when I saw Gaga getting older, when I started thinking about being alone. She seemed to get old so quickly. Her and Mum were a team. They only needed each other in the world, which was beautiful, but they needed each other. They fed off each other. When Mum died, it’s like Gaga suddenly started to go too. And she knew it. That’s why she started worrying for me. Trying to plan. She wasn’t sleeping, I know it was playing on her mind all the time.’

‘Did they not make a plan for you before she died?’

‘I never asked.’ Laura swallows. ‘But Mum wasn’t ever the one to make plans. Gaga made them, Mum helped see them through. I felt that Mum would have approved what happened in the end. I know it sounds odd, like we didn’t communicate, but we did. We lived so close to each other, in one another’s pockets, we didn’t always talk about things, each of us knew how the other was feeling, we didn’t need to always ask.’ She looks at Bo, embarrassed, but trying to make her see.

‘I understand,’ Bo says, genuinely, though Solomon wonders if she does. Bo is a person who usually has to ask. ‘So when did you find out about Tom being your dad?’

‘When Gaga told me about her plan to move me to the cottage. She told me that Tom Toolin was my dad, that he had never known about me. She had met with him and he’d agreed I could live on his land. She told me that he had a twin brother who could never know. That was Tom’s only request.’