"Coming from the north, were you?" says Penelope, as she opens one of the drawers and produces an alarmingly hefty cleaver. "Well, that's no big surprise. Used to be dams up there, so I hear- big ones- but they were wrecked even before the War. Sabotage, apparently. There's stories, but I don't know which of them anyone can believe and which are just some kind of fever dream made up to keep folks company while the Canucks are prowling around in the night."

She eyes the boar, and then Thomas, then shrugs and sets about the initial butchery herself.

"We've got a basin and a pump if you want to wash up," Thomas says. "Right this way."