Being the only girl in this dystopian band of brothers she found it none too difficult to fade away from the family view, but soon she perfected the art of disappearing completely.

She would look wistfully at the sky, and she relished her favourite freezing cold, north-easterly winds, that blew bitter draughts that mixed with her drifting tobacco smoke throughout the home, ‘They are the spirits of the old country,’ she would always say.

This was not a romantic half-light, the white tailor’s dummies that stood like Terracotta Warriors forever on guard in her basic room, infused up the eerie glow like sunbathers soaking up the ultra-violet rays on a beach.