Trick of the Dark

Prologue

What's your earliest memory? I don't mean something you've been told so many times it feels like a memory. I'm talking about the first thing you remember through your child's eyes. A knee-high memory, a don't-understand-the-words memory, an honest-to-god slice of emotion that can still fell you like a tree.The recalled moment that is the key to what shapes you for ever.

Mine has narrow wooden bars running vertically through it. A cot or a playpen, at a guess. I can't picture what I'm standing on. I can see my hands clutching the bars tightly, small fingers still chubby like toddlers' are supposed to be. My nails are crusted with dirt and there's a very particular smell. Over the years, I've worked out that it's a mixture of stale urine, marijuana, alcohol and unwashed bodies. Even now, when I walk among the homeless who inhabit the invisible hinterland of the world's great cities, I feel comforted by the smell that repels most people. The homeless smell like home to me.

I'm stalling. Can you tell I'm stalling? Because the heart of the memory still makes me shiver to my soul.

In front of me is a movie cut into slices by the bars. My mother is wearing a bright tangerine blouse and the man has the front of it bunched in his fist. He's shaking my mother like one of the dogs would shake a rat or a rabbit. He's shouting at her too. I don't know what he's shouting, it's just a jagged cascade of violent sound. She's sobbing, my mother. Every time she tries to speak, he slaps her hard with his other hand. Her head jerks like it's on a spring. There's a thread of blood trickling from one nostril. Her hands try to push him away, but he doesn't even notice, he's so much stronger than her.

Then one of her hands slips down and presses against the front of his trousers, stroking him through the stiff dirty denim. She lets herself fall against him, close so it's harder for him to hit her. He stops shouting but he doesn't let go of her shirt. He pulls up her skirt and pushes her down on the floor and carries on making her cry. Only in a different way.

That's my first memory. I wish it was the worst one.