The Day She Died

Nineteen

I stayed exhausted too. Four o’clock came crawling round, and I had to drive back to the cottage with the car windows open to keep myself awake. One good thing about living down a farm track and through a caravan site, though-especially when you had to take it at five miles an hour behind the bin lorry-was I could be sure Gary or one of his minions wasn’t following me. I stepped out onto the turf and let the sea breeze blow my hair back. Minions! Could someone be a friend of Dot and have minions? Henchmen, heavies, muscle. A week ago I thought I knew what my worries were, and they were bad enough. I turned and looked towards the cottage. Then, in the time-honoured way, it all went tits up because I met a guy.

I could see him through the living room window. He was sitting at the table, bent over something. Reading, maybe, or writing. And I could hear the sound of the kids, squealing and thrashing about with something. Would I go back? Undo it if I could? I pushed my sleeve up and looked at the red mark where Gary had grabbed me. Thought about Kazek in my flat and Ros’s sister. Gus lifted his head and waved. I waved back and trotted up the path.

“Hiya!” I shouted.

“Jessieeeeee!” squealed Ruby.

“Mummmeeeeee,” said Dillon coming along at her heels. He put his head against my legs and hugged me.

“He doesn’t mean it,” Ruby told me. “He calls everybody that babysits Mummy.”

“I know,” I said, playing it cool, but my heart had filled my chest until I thought my coat would pop open. “So what are you doing?”

“Playing at funerals,” said Ruby. “Come on, Dill. You be the dead body and I’ll be the angel.”

I took off my coat and scarf and fluffed my hair in the mirror, stopped just short of biting my lips and pinching my cheeks. Got close though.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Gus. He was writing-a proper letter on a pad of writing paper with a lined sheet underneath to keep it straight.

“Yeah,” he said, laughing. “Wee toe rags. I told them about Becky’s funeral, and Ruby took to it. Hey, guess what?”

“Who’re you writing to? Relations?” I said. “What?”

“What relations?” he said. “I thought I’d told you. I’m writing to that hill walker. See if he wants to come to the funeral maybe.” I couldn’t keep the frown off my face. He raised his eyebrows, silently asking.

“Ohhhh, I don’t know,” I said. “Just. Okay, that’s a nice idea. He might. Best to give him the choice. But what about your mum and your dad? And why not try to reach your brother? And surely Becky must have some family. Why not let them all know on the off-chance some of them might want to come too? That’s all. I’ll butt out. That’s all I’m going to say.”

“Guess who phoned today,” he answered. I think it was an answer anyway.

“Your brother,” I tried. “Becky’s mum? Who?”

“Try again, Jess,” he said. “Who have we been waiting to hear from?”

“Who?” I said. “Oh! Ros’s sister?” Shit! Did she phone here after we spoke to her at the flat? Had she dropped me in it? Can’t have, the way he was smiling at me.

“Close but no banana,” he said. “Ros called.”

I flumped down into one of the armchairs. I could feel my mouth hanging open but couldn’t close it.

“Seriously?” I said. “She called here?”

“It’s not that much of a shocker, is it?” he said. “She doesn’t want her job back, if that’s what’s worrying you. Yeah, she phoned and said she’d just decided to make a clean break. She met someone else, got a chance of a job up north, took it.”

“Someone else as opposed to who?” I said.

“Becky,” said Gus. “You were right about that. Don’t know why I didn’t see it for myself. Years ago.”

I nodded. “What did she say when you told her Becky died?” I asked. Gus whistled and shook his head again. A big reaction, he seemed to be saying. But what a weird way to signal it, far too light-hearted for how it must have been.

“She took it pretty hard,” he said. “Obviously. I told her she wasn’t responsible. If she didn’t know Becky was feeling that bad, how could she have guessed? But Ros is one of those people, you know. Takes care of everyone. Really-what’s the word?-conscientious.”

I nodded slowly. The sort of person who wouldn’t leave a friend from home stranded in an empty caravan when she knew he was in trouble. None of this made sense to me.

“Well,” I said. “That’s that then. That’s one mystery solved.”

He had bent his head to carry on writing, but he looked up at me now.

“That’s all the mysteries solved,” he corrected. “Unless you’re talking about the thing you’ve still got to tell me.” I tried not to let my eyes grow wide. “Did you ever think, Jessie, that if you let it all go, tell me everything, the whole pteronophobia might just blow away like a… ”

“Feather?” I said. Just like that. I was amazed at how much easier it was than even a week ago.

“I was going to say puff of smoke, but okay. Come here,” he said. I hauled myself to my feet and went to sit on his knee. He squeezed me so hard my bra squeaked. “I heard what Dill called you. And Ruby’s talking rubbish, you know. He doesn’t call babysitters that. Just you.”

I stood up, stretching-he really had squeezed me quite tight-and he ran his hands up and down my body. Big strong hands. Safe hands. I remembered Kazek catching the camera before it hit the floor.

“It’s not called rubbish now,” I said. “Ruby’s talking recycling.”

He laughed again even though it wasn’t really funny. “So, what do you fancy for tea?” he said. “T-bone steak or Lobster Thermidor.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Not sure I’m hungry enough to do justice to a T-bone. And I had lobster for lunch… ”

“In that case, then, maybe I can interest you in some tuna, pasta, and sweet corn?”

“Perfect!” I said. “As served in The Ivy. I think I’ll just take a wee stroll along the beach first, mind you. Cooped up all day, you know.”

“Want company?” said Gus.

“You finish your letter,” I said. “But can I ask you a question?” He nodded. “Why aren’t you typing it? Is it to make it more personal?” To me, letters on writing paper were so unusual that they seemed kind of weird now. Like only stalkers would send them.

“Haven’t got a word processor,” said Gus.

“You haven’t got Word on your computer?” I said.

“What makes you think I’ve got a computer?” said Gus, looking around as if he expected to see one magically appear. Right enough, I hadn’t seen it around, but I knew he had one.

“You said you looked stuff up,” I reminded him.

“It’s in the workshop,” he told me. “I use it for graphics. No need for Word.”

“Right,” I said. I thought Ruby would feel left out if she was the only one at nursery who didn’t use a computer, but then maybe she got a shot when she chummed him to work-when he was working, that is, when he didn’t have sculptor’s block. I thought of what Steve had said and put it out of my mind again as quickly as it had come in there. I said no more. Dill might be calling me Mummy, but they were Gus’s kids and if he didn’t think they needed a computer yet, I wasn’t going to argue.

It was nearly completely dark outside, too dark to walk on the track with its tufts and potholes, but okay down on the beach with the long sweep of empty sand. I put my hands deep in the pockets of the coat I’d borrowed-it had looked so much warmer than mine-and with my head down against the wind, I took off along the bay.

So Ros had phoned. If no one else had called since and I went back now and dialled 1471, I could probably get right on to her. Tell her to call her sister, ask her what she was planning to do to help Kazek. How could I explain it to Gus, though? Say I wanted to get some cleaning tips? But she wasn’t really much of a cleaner, was she? Gizzy had said as much. What was that word Kazek had used-the magic word that described her powers? It was written down on the scrap of paper tucked in my jeans, but too dark to read it now.

Well, I’d try the phone later if I got the chance, when Gus was out of the way. And even if I never got through to her, I could tell her sister she was okay. I’d as good as told her anyway-that she had packed her stuff and taken it with her-but it wouldn’t hurt to follow up with some actual news. Via Gus. Like the news about her taking her things had come via Gus.

And that’s why I was out on this walk, even if I didn’t want to think the thoughts out loud. Maybe Ros had phoned Gizzy too, and I could ask her. I could check that the cops had really been on to Gizzy about Ros’s things. I was just making sure. As I turned up the rise towards the office and shop, I was glad to see a light still shining. I knocked on the door and tried the handle.

“We’re closed,” she bawled. “Ring the emergency number and leave a message.”

“It’s Jessie,” I bawled back. I could hear her sigh right along the passageway and through the closed door.

“What do you want?” she said, opening up on the chain.

“Has Ros called you?” I asked. “Oh, gonny let me in, Giz. I’m freezing.”

“Ros?” she said. “What makes you think that?”

“She phoned Becky’s house,” I said. “Got the bad news.” Gizzy sat back down at the computer and pushed her hair back with her hands. Whatever she was trying to do, it wasn’t going well by the look of her. “Do you think we should tell the police?” I went on. “I know they weren’t going to pursue it but… ”

“Eh?” said Gizzy. She was only half-listening, looking between a manual cracked open flat by her keyboard and whatever mysteries were on the screen. “Tell them what?”

“Since they took the trouble to phone,” I said.

“Did they? What did you tell them? Oh bloody hell, I have! I did! I just did that!” She stuck her middle finger up at the screen and picked up the manual to give it a closer look. I was glad she wasn’t looking at me. I’m sure my face fell.

“The police didn’t call here to ask about Ros disappearing?” I said.

“Who told you that?” she said. “They’ll say anything to shut you up.”

The strict truth was that no one had told me that. Gus had told me that police had said Ros took her things, and when I asked him if they’d heard it from Gizzy, he said they must have. Maybe they were “just saying anything” to shut Gus up too.

“I tell you what,” said Gizzy. She pushed her glasses up onto her head and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “If she’d phoned here today, I’d have reached down the line and dragged back by her scrawny wee Polish neck. She’s left me in total bleeding chaos.”

“Can I have a go on the computer, Giz?” I said. I was feeling in the pocket of my jeans for the scrap of paper.

“Can you do spreadsheets?”

“No,” I said. “I just want to Google something.”

Gizzy rolled backwards in her chair. “Be my guest. See if you can pick up a virus that’ll melt the whole thing down so I’ll never have to look at it again.”

I Googled translation devices, picked the first one, hit Polish to English and copied in prawnikiem from the note. Lawyer, it told me. Ros was a lawyer? Working as cleaner in a caravan site? Jesus, Kazek might be a brain surgeon working as a… it occurred to me then that I didn’t know what Kazek and Wojtek had come here to do.

“Cheers,” I said. “See you Friday.”

“Get ready for Armageddon,” said Gizzy. “After the October half-term break’s the worst clean of the year. Site’s full and the weather’s so crap that they’re all in their vans mucking them up. I’m just warning you.”

“In your own special way,” I said, but she was back to the manual again and didn’t hear me.

Ros was a lawyer. I could sort of see how that would help Kazek, although if Gary the Gangster was the sort to cut someone’s throat, he didn’t seem to have much respect for the law. And if Ros did respect the law, then how did she square the wads of fifties away? And why did she leave? Why didn’t Gus ask her? Nothing he had told me made any kind of sense at all.

But I had to trust Gus. He had turned my life around, made me hope that it was going to be something worth living. Damn Steve for making me doubt him! I shoved my hands even deeper into the coat’s pockets, and that’s when I felt something I hadn’t noticed before. Right deep down in the lining, there was the unmistakable cold jagged shape of a bunch of keys.

My heart beat harder at the very thought of it. He was so secretive. He’d been so weird that night when he took me there. But I just wanted to see the pram again, maybe take a look at the replica house in the workshop next door, just to set my mind at rest. I wasn’t checking to see if there really was a computer in there. Why would he lie to me about that anyway?

I hunched into the collar of the coat as I passed the cottage, sure that if he looked out the window he would see me and know where I was going. Know that I was spying on him. Then he’d ask me to leave and I’d be back to my lonely wee flat-with Kazek, of course. I shouldn’t be snooping round after Gus. I should be 1471-ing Ros and telling her to get her arse in gear and help her friend. But since I was here…

Which side would I look in? Pram was in one and House was in the other. I’d seen Pram. I hunched over the padlock on the other door and started searching for the right key. It took a while, and then once the door was open, it took me a while to find the string that pulled the light on too. At last my fingers fastened round it and I tugged. Blinked, stepped back, nearly stumbling. The wall was right in front of my face, less than two feet away. A breezeblock wall right to the ceiling and all the way to both sides. It filled the space completely. How would he ever get it out? And where were the windows? The door? It was supposed to be a copy of the cottage, but it was just a block. It made me think of a tumor, sitting there inside the byre. Solid and ugly. No wonder he didn’t want me to see. And no bloody wonder he couldn’t face coming here and working on it. It was monstrous. It made me feel queasy. Or it and the smell of the cattle drain combined. I wanted to lock the door again and run away.

But, I told myself, on the other hand, here it is. Okay, he’d embellished a bit about how far he’d got. He hadn’t skimmed over the blocks or done the windows, but still. There it totally was. And no wonder the other room was such a mess. There was no room in here for anything else besides this. Nothing in the two-foot-wide passageway between the front of House and the byre wall. Nothing, that is, except for a sack-an old-fashioned hessian sack, tied shut with string, leaning against the corner. I couldn’t help myself. I tiptoed towards it. There was a bit of a smell coming off it, hard to say what kind of smell, but it stirred some kind of troubled feeling in me. I bent over and touched it. It gave and resisted both. It was squashy but there were wiry little points too. I knew I’d felt that before, the give and resist. What the hell was it? I pulled a bit at the string around the neck and peered inside.

Then I was out, banging off the stone and the breezeblock, ricocheting like a pinball, back out into the dark of the field.

A sack of them. A whole brown sackcloth bag of them and I had felt them. Put my hand right on them and felt the curled ends give and the spike ends squeak and prickle. I retched and bent over, but my heart was thumping too fast and my throat was too tight. I had touched them! I had pulled the string. And it might have come loose and they’d all have burst out and I’d have been trapped in there with them flying around me. I’d never have got them back into the bag and Gus would know and-

Gus.

I was drenched in sweat but as cold as a corpse as I stumbled back, pulled the light switch, and closed the door. I locked up and dropped the keys back into the pocket of my borrowed coat.

Why would Gus have nothing at all in the same workshop as the piece except for a sack full of them? How could that be innocent? How could that just happen to be?

It couldn’t. He must have collected them and put them there deliberately. He must be keeping them there as a way of scaring me if I ever stepped out of line. He’d tie me up in there with them, or he’d go to the workshop in the night and get them and empty them all round the room while I was sleeping and tie me down and…

I could hear a voice, and it was Lauren’s voice, telling me to breathe in and breathe out. In for four and out for five. In for five and out for seven. In for six and out for nine and catch a hold of my racing thoughts and start to fold them up and put them away.

Of course he collected them. He didn’t want me to walk on the beach and see them. It was just the kind of thing Gus would do. And they were in a sack in his workshop because… he didn’t want to put them in the wheeliebin and upset me. He’d even taken the very first one-off the end of the novelty pen-he’d taken it out of the wheeliebin, taken it right away. That was last Tuesday night. A week ago today. I stopped short. Why did that thought bother me?

Or. Maybe he had a sack of them like he had all that other stuff lying around. Maybe he’d had it for years, lying about with the light bulbs and lamps, but last week when he knew I was coming, he moved the sack to the other room in case I saw it. And that was why he didn’t want me to follow him through when he went to get Pram. Maybe that was the whole reason why he was so peculiar that night. Poor Gus. Worrying about me. I was glad I’d had that fright before I could look for a computer; he didn’t deserve me spying after all he’d done for me.

I let myself in at the cottage door and went to find him. He was in the kitchen eating pasta with the children. He looked like he hadn’t a care in the world. The same way he’d looked in Marks and Sparks with Ruby that day, before he smashed his phone. I smiled at him.

“I was just going to send out a search party for you,” he said. “You okay?”

“Party!” said Dillon. “Happy Birthday!”

“Your pasta’s cold,” said Ruby. “And we ate all the top bit with the crispy cheese.” She waved her fork at the dish in the middle of the table, a wodge of pasta and, right enough, no top bit at all.

“I don’t mind,” I said, sitting down. “I’m just happy to be here. I’d eat anything so long as I could eat it with here with you.”

Gus screwed up his nose and laughed. “Oh, kids,” he said. “This is too good to be true. What will we give Jessie if she’ll eat anything, eh?”

“Liver,” said Ruby.

“Yum, yum,” I said.

“Rice pudding and gooseberries,” said Gus.

“Rice pudding and bogies!” said Ruby.

“Bogies,” said Dillon. And then he went straight for the big one. “POO!”

“No, no, don’t make me eat poo,” I said. Gus leapt to his feet and went rummaging in the larder, came out with a jar of Nutella. He opened it, put in a finger, and then came towards me waving the brown goo like a snake’s head, to and fro.

“Jessie eats POO!” said Ruby. I took a tiny nibble, no way I was going to suck his finger in front of the kids.

“Yum, yum,” I said.

“Not poo, not really,” said Dillon, troubled now by the thought of how often he’d had toast and Nutella maybe.

“Not really, baby,” I said.

“I’m a baby too,” said Ruby. “Dillon’s the second baby. I’m the first one.”

“You’re a beautiful baby, baby,” I said.

“But I’m a big girl,” said Ruby. “Bigger than Dillon.”

“Oh Ruby, I love you,” I said. “You’re just brilliant.”

“I am actually,” said Ruby. “That’s okay for you to say that. That’s actually true.” Under the table Gus had reached out both his feet and grabbed one of mine between them. The pasta was lukewarm and under-salted-for the kids, probably. But I’d never tasted anything so good in my life. And when we bathed the kids together, me washing Ruby’s hair and Gus playing subs with Dillon, I felt as if my heart had steel bands round it, it ached so much from wanting this to be my future. It was the happiest night of my life. Before or since. It was the best, most hopeful, most innocent moment I’ve ever had or ever will.

It lasted about half an hour. And it was my own fault. I pulled it to pieces single-handed.

“My turn,” said Gus, once the kids were in bed. “If you don’t mind.” He had his coat on, the same one I’d borrowed, and his wellies too.

“You going to the workshop?”

His face clouded. “My turn for a walk,” he said. “I told you-I can’t face the workshop just now.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “Know the truth? That night we were there, I thought it was kind of creepy.” I thought he looked amused, and I even thought I knew why. How creepy would I have found it if he hadn’t hidden that sack away?

As soon as he was out of the house and I’d followed the bobbing spot of yellow torchlight until it was far away down by the water’s edge, I made for the phone in the hall and dialled 1471. There were so many clicks and buzzes I thought for sure it wasn’t working, and the ring sounded funny too, but after a minute a woman answered.

“Czesc?” she said.

I punched the air. “Ros?”

“Masz jakies wiadomosci o mojej siostrze?”

“This is Jessie Constable, I’m a friend of Gus King and I-”

“You?” she said. “What is it you want from me?”

“Eva?” I said. “Oh, shit! You phoned back?”

“What are you talking about?” she said “You called me.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “When did you phone? Did you leave a message? Did you talk to Gus? Did he tell you Ros phoned?”

“What? Why did you not tell me this earlier when I spoke to you?”

“No, no, no.” God, as soon as I talked to this woman it was instant confusion. I don’t know whether it was her or me, but I had more luck talking to Kazek with the sound effects and the miming.

“Ros phoned after I called you today,” I said. “What time did you call here?”

“I called the number Kazek gave me yesterday and I left a message. I do not know what you are asking me.”

“I’ll work it out and get back,” I said. I hung up the phone, desperate to get it out of my hands, like it was a wasp that had just stung me. If she had phoned yesterday and her number was the one in the memory, then how did Ros talk to Gus today? I thought it through very calmly and of course it wasn’t that difficult. In less than a minute I knew.

There must be another mobile somewhere. There had to be. Gus had stamped on his, Becky had taken hers with her-she’d used it to call Gus, call his voice-mail anyway. But somewhere in this house, there must a phone that Ros had called to tell him she was okay.

It wasn’t in his coat pocket. And it wasn’t in his trouser pocket. (I’d put my hands in his pockets when we were standing looking down at the kids in their beds; there was only some change in there.) I looked in the hallstand drawer, with the gloves and spare keys. There was a charger but no phone. Nothing in the sideboard drawers in the living room. Nothing in the kitchen junk drawer. Nothing in the top drawer of Gus’s dresser in the bedroom or in his bedside cabinet either. In Becky’s bedside cabinet-this was the first time I’d opened it; I’d just been putting my glass of water on the top and ignoring the drawer and cupboard bit-there was a lot of photos. Ros and the kids, Ros and Becky and the kids, just the kids (where was Gus?). And a diary. It sat there in my hand like a grenade with the pin out. I poked a finger in and nudged the pages open. I can’t stand this anymore, it said at the top of the page. Life doesn’t feel worth-

I snapped it closed. I wasn’t going to read any more than I had to, but I wished I had read it days ago. He was right to be satisfied, not to want the Fiscal making a song and dance of it. Even her writing was screwed up smaller than an ant with cramp. Tiny, tiny little writing-nothing like the scrawl she’d left in the suicide note, once she’d given up and decided to let it all go.

Where else could I check?

There was a basket in the back porch, where stuff got put that came out of pockets before the clothes went in the machine. That was a likely spot for a mobile to end up. I let myself out the back door, tipped the basket towards the light, picked out a few purple ponies whose pink manes and tails were hiding everything and… bingo! A phone.

With no charge. I tipped the basket again and threw it back in.

And that’s when I saw the thing I’d missed before.

I reached in and pulled it out, feeling it stretch and then snap and sting my hand as it the end of it came free.

Ja jestem Droga, Prawda i Zycie, it read. Polish. It was broken, the rough ends of the rubber pale and crumbling, like it had been ripped off. I turned it over in my hands. It had to be Ros’s. Not as good as a phone with a number in it, but… if I knew what charity this was, maybe it would give me some clues. Like if I wore an RSPB one, people might find out I’d worked in the shop and then they could ask my old workmates and find out my mother lived in Sanquhar and go and ask her for my number. Or something. Worth a try. I took my mobile out and phoned the flat. Would he answer? He was being careful, letting the machine get it, but he picked up when heard me say, “Kazek, it’s Jessie.”

“Jessie-Pleasie,” he said. “You okay?”

“Face hurts from grinning,” I said. “Listen.” And I read the words on the bracelet to him.

“Ya yestem droga pravda ee zeekie,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. A soft cry like he’d turned and seen a sunset. He said the words back to me, pronouncing them better. “How, Jessie?” he said. “What?”

“What does it mean?” I asked him. What were the chances he’d be able to put it into English, over the phone, without miming?

“Is Bible,” he said. “I am path and truth.”

“I am the way, the truth, and the life?” I said.

“You read Polish Bible, Jessie-Pleasie?”

“It’s a… oh, shit,” I said. “It’s a rubber bangle, Kazek. Arm, right? Hand? Charity?” There was silence. “Listen.” I held the bracelet up to the phone and snapped the rubber.

“Opaska!” he said. “Bransoletka-cegielka? Brad Pitt. Save fish. Save planet.”

“Yes!” I said. “We’re getting better at this. It was Ros’s.”

“No,” he said. “No way, Jessie-Pleasie. Not Bible. Not Ros. Ja jestem Droga, Prawda i Zycie? Was Wojtek.”

“It can’t be,” I said.

“Police give?”

I turned the bracelet round in my hand again. The crumbling rubber on the broken ends, like it had been snatched off. Like in a struggle. Then I whipped my head up as a noise came over the turf, from the track, a hollow scraping, rumbling sound. It was Gus dragging the wheelies.

“I’ve got to go,” I said to Kazek. “Go to sleep, let Jesus keep.” Fuck sake, I was quoting my mother.

I shoved the bracelet in my pocket and slipped inside again. I didn’t want to see Gus right now. I needed to get my head straight. It wasn’t Wojtek’s bracelet, couldn’t be. It had to be Ros’s. Maybe her mum sent it, and she snorted and gave it to Ruby, who wouldn’t understand the words. And Ruby used it for a catapult and burst it, and Becky left it in the basket when she washed Ruby’s jeans. There was a simple explanation for everything, really. Gus was a good man. And I was going to prove it. I was going to tell him the worst thing anyone could hear and he was going to love me anyway. And then I’d tell him I’d love him even if he told me the worst thing he could tell me. And he would. And it wouldn’t really be bad, like my worst stuff wasn’t either. He would explain it all. He would make sense of everything.

I heard him nudging the wheelie into its space on the porch and coming in the door.

“I love your kids,” I said to him, when he came into the living room.

“Me too,” he said laughing. “Have they been up, running about, being lovable like?”

“No, I’m just saying. I love kids and I’m sick of keeping away from them. I need to speak to you.”

He held up a finger to tell me to wait, went out into the hall, and came back without his coat. He dropped down into his armchair and started unlacing his boots.

“I thought I should steer clear cos I’d never be able to cope if something happened. And you have to cope. If there’s little kids around. You just absolutely have to. Because if you don’t, then everyone’s stuffed, aren’t they?”

He sat waiting for me to go on, holding both ends of his laces tight, making me think of a cartoon of a bird pulling a worm I’d seen in a book when I was wee and hated.

“Something happened. More than I’ve told you.”

“I know,” he said.

“About my granny’s quilt.”

He said it again. “I know.”

“But I want to trust you,” I said. “I’m going to tell you. Even though it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. Unless you want to go first and tell me?”

He went back to his boots again then, finished taking them off, set them at the fireside to dry out-he must have been on the beach-and rubbed his socks together.

“I’m all ears, Jess,” he said.

“Please, please, please call me Jessie,” I said. “My mother calls me Jess. I can’t stand thinking about my mother when I’m here with you.”

“So tell me the rest of the story just one time,” he said, “and you never have to think about her again.”

Like he knew it was my mother all along and not my granny at all. Like he knew already what I was going to say.

The rest of the story. Where was I starting from? What had I said before? I pulled the stuffing out of the quilt and my mother tied me down. I’d told him it was in my room at home, but he’d seen through that. He knew it was my granny’s house. And he knew I couldn’t turn my face, but he didn’t know why. Could I tell him? I could try.

“My mother was going to some… jamboree,” I began. Gus laughed and I joined him. Where had that expression sprung from? Oh, yes, Kazek had said it to Ros’s sister on the phone. What a weird English word for him to know. Or maybe it was the same in Polish, like polka. But why was he talking about it anyway? “Yeah, sorry,” I said. “My mother was off to a jamboree. All weekend. But Friday was my granny’s whist night. So my mum bedded me down and my granny came in to check me before she went to bed.”

I remember the door opening, the look of the flowery landing wallpaper in the lamplight and Granny’s head, done up in rollers and shining with cream, coming slowly round the door. I squeezed my eyes shut. So ashamed for her to see me tied up like a dog in a yard. Suffer the little children, my mother had said to me and, a child is known by its doings. As well as the line about the rod and the spoiling, of course. She just loved that one.

“She’d carped on and on at me about the quilt-showing her up, how she had to sit through a lecture from Granny about how children were children and you couldn’t knock it out of them, shouldn’t even try. She was so angry. I couldn’t bear that I’d made her so angry. I couldn’t stand the thought of Granny seeing what a bad girl I was that my mum had to tie me.”

“Wait a minute,” Gus said. “This isn’t the night you pulled the stuffing out?”

“No, this was after. My mum tied me up so I wouldn’t do it again.”

“Was your gran still angry with you?”

“No, I was telling the truth when I said she thought it was funny. But she didn’t think it was funny when she saw me tied.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t say anything. She just made this noise.”

She had walked over to my bed and bent down low to kiss me. Then she froze and slowly she pulled back the covers, showing my wrists and the ropes. She made a whistling, whooping noise and turned away. Couldn’t she bear me in her sight? Then she made a noise that was like a dragon in a cave, a horrible roaring, choking sound. Was this the wrath that my mum was always warning me I would bring raining down?

“I heard a crash and I opened my eyes. Granny was lying on the floor, rolling from side to side. And she was in brown puddle. Probably not brown, but it was dark in there. She’d thrown up. God, her hair and her shiny face with the face cream. And she was clutching at herself and making this noise.”

That noise.

“It was like a kind of gobbling,” I told Gus. He was right forward in his chair, right on the edge, holding his knees, staring at me with his mouth hanging open. “Wet and choked and just the most horrible thing I’d ever heard. I didn’t understand what I’d done.”

“What you’d done?”

“I know, I know, I know now,” I said. “But I didn’t know that night.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“I turned and faced the other way. Even though there was a feather end sticking in me. I kept facing the wall. And eventually she was quiet. She passed out. That’s what I know now, grownup me. Little me thought she’d fallen asleep.”

And I fell asleep too, the way kids do. I slept until her crying woke me. Her sobbing and the way she was calling my name. Jess, help Granny. Help Granny, there’s a good girl. Dehhh, hehhh Gannnn, goohh guuhhh. But I wasn’t a good girl. I was a bad girl and my mother had tied me up, so I couldn’t help Granny like a good girl would do.

“She wet herself,” I told him. “And she shit herself. There’s nothing dignified about dying, you know.”

“She-fuck sake, Jessie. She died? When you were tied up and couldn’t-”

“Eventually. It got light and I was hungry. Then I wet myself too. And I slept and so did she, then it was dark again and she was moving, thrashing about, and her head knocked against the floor and, God, the smell. The smell of the pair of us in there.”

When it got light again and I looked at her, it wasn’t Granny anymore. It was this purple thing. Lying there, crusted and twisted. I didn’t understand. I heard her talking to me a lot after that, but I know now I was dreaming. Or hallucinating.

“I was there another night and day after the day she died. One more and it would have been me too. But my mother came back and found me.”

Only that was a memory I wasn’t going to touch with a ten-foot pole. I wrapped it up, shrank it down, and threw it out to sea. So far out that it went over the horizon and hit the setting sun and it hissed as it shrivelled and disappeared.

“And so that’s why I thought to myself I should stay away from kids because I can’t handle feathers, and you’ve to handle things with little kids because they can’t cope on their own.”

Gus had put his head down in his hands and now he rubbed his face hard, but he hadn’t rubbed away all the tears when he looked up again.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “You were five and you were tied to your bed. How could you cope with that? How could anyone?”

“I know,” I said. “It makes no sense at all. Sometimes things just don’t.” Like Wojtek’s bracelet in Becky’s junk basket. But I wasn’t going to think about that now.

“Is that really really really what happened?” he said.

“Gus,” I said, “don’t even. It took me twenty years to get that night straight. Twenty years to sort out what was what.”

“How come? It sounds pretty clear to me. Hellish, like, but clear. And it’s no bloody wonder you can’t forgive your mother, by the way.”

I said nothing. I didn’t want to milk the sympathy. I didn’t want him to know that for twenty years and counting my beloved mother hadn’t managed to forgive me.