A/N: Thank you so much for all the feedback once again! I am very grateful for any answers. This chapter might leave you with some questions, but please be patient! :) As usual, the tags are the same: violence, cursing, period-typical racism, etc.


three


The war was another thing never mentioned. In the early mornings, we met in the courtyard and fed the dogs small shreds of meat. Our boots slapped against cobbled streets toward the factory and we continued onward like we always had, together. I made aprons and he hauled crates filled with those same aprons into trucks before we walked to the butcher-shop on Brixton Street and he bought more meat for the dogs, tucked safely into his pocket, later peeled into lighter strips for the pups that soon surrounded him on Bell Road. One evening, Alfie pulled a mutt onto his lap and let it lap against his face with its panting tongue, drooling in thick, whitish streams all over the newest shirt that I had made him.

I watched him with the strangest feeling that he was already saying his goodbyes to me, somehow.

It had been tapped out between the syllables, it had been settled between the pauses in his speech, his goodbye. I heard it, too. I understood it because of that old gift from God in my gut or just from how he held my arm a little tighter in the evenings before we separated and from how he wanted me to read and write for him more than I ever had before and maybe from how he had told me that he loved me. The words had been spoken in the blend of greyish dawn streaked in slashes of blue out in the backyard. In between had been the faint patter of droplets against the roof of the factory, the sinking of mud beneath boots, the loss of warmth against my hands because he had pulled himself from me in all senses. He had resigned himself.

Afterward, he said, "I think we should visit the fairground this weekend, Willa."

In other words: goodbye, Willa.


ii

There had been fuzzing orbs of orange all around us, on the carousel; it seemed that there was no war, that never had there been a Sar-jay-voo nor a fella shot on its soil, and all those posters about patriotism dotted around Bell Road had been swept away in a sudden downpour, and there had never been headlines about some borders invaded, about soldiers deployed. Blurred, the headlines had dripped into smeared blobs of wet paint from the wild spin of the carousel until I fell against Alfie in breathless laughter, felt the warmth of him, felt the strength of him, felt him pull me against him so that we could spin together, further and further from all those soldiers deployed, all those borders invaded. I thought, what does all that nonsense over there have to do with him, anyway? Here he is, with me. What does it have to do with him?


iii

Stumbling from the carousel, we had found a booth for photographs. Alfie wanted two photographs, paid for both and pushed us into a line, smoothing out his collar and licking both his thumbs to sweep against his eyebrows before he leaned close and pretended to inspect me with this displeased look on his face, tutting and huffing while I laughed at him and tried to pull his wrists away from me, blushing madly at his affectionate touch. Alfie liked to stretch his arm around my shoulder and pull me close against him, tuck me there beneath his chin and let me lean backward against the warmth of his chest, especially in the crisp, bitter chill of night.

Nestled in a field, the fairground had been far from London; the stars had been brighter there, sparkled with more intensity, sprinkled all over the blackness. I was shuffled forward by Alfie, pushed first toward the photographer and Alfie made it clear that he wanted this photograph to be without him. Embarrassed, I stepped away from that white sheet and toward him instead, cheeks stained in redness at the thought of standing alone in front of all those people. Alfie was not that much taller than me, but he always seemed it, straightened by his confidence, not that I ever had much of that, which Alfie knew, because he also knew that I could suffer from sudden bouts of shyness if I was made to pose in front of others.

Gypsy Girl had posed. Gypsy Girl had done all that, a long time ago – not Willa.

Alfie caught me by the shoulders and turned me so that I could not glimpse the crowds behind him, so that I could only focus on him. He said, "Willa – look at me, darlin' – I want just one photograph of ya, yeah? I want it because I'm a selfish man and I'd like to be able to look at ya even when you ain't with me. Don' you think I want all them other lads out there in the world to know I got me-self the most beautiful girl on me arm, yeah, want them to see that she ain't afraid of nothin', my Willa, especially not afraid o' takin' some poxy photograph in front o' these fuckin' strangers out 'ere -…"

In some butchered form of harmonisation, I found myself nodding just like Alfie was nodding, because his eyes were pleading with me and I knew what the photograph really meant for him, I heard it just like I had heard it out there in that blend of greyish dawn streaked in slashes of blue out in the backyard; I love you, Willa Sykes – now, goodbye. I suppose that that was the reason for which I let him turn me around toward that white sheet and stand me there, like a doll with limbs manipulated, so that the photographer could bend behind his little flap and fiddle with buttons.

All the while, I looked right at Alfie, never looked away from him. Just as the photograph was taken, I thought, he will never stop fighting and that is why it has everything to do with him.


iv

In the photograph, I stood with lips held in a timid smile, shyness making me half-turn from the lens of that camera. Alfie traced the outline of me held in this photograph that he had wanted so badly, trailed his fingertip across my thin, narrow eyebrows, drew around my sweetheart jawline and finished with my eyes, which were dark like the colour of coal. While still a bairn, Esther used to tell me that Gypsies were always the prettiest because of those dark eyes. Only I had grown and learned that she only ever said those things so that the other girls would become upset and spiteful. There was not much difference in the darkness of my eyes and those of Ruth or Daisy, really, both brunette and dark themselves. It was not an accident that Esther had filled a flat with pretty girls. Pretty girls made more coins for her.

I told him, "That's the first photograph of me. The only one of me, Alfie."

Gently, he put it in his pocket; it was never mentioned after that.


v

For the second photograph, Alfie stood alongside me with his shoulders held straight and his arm still around me. He wore a smart coat, had that faithful scarf that I made him draped around his shoulders. He wore his Jewish cap too, round and black. The photographer pulled himself out from beneath that flap and glanced at Alfie before his mouth crinkled and he looked at me. He said, "Would you mind tellin' your fella to get rid of that yid-cap for this photograph, sweetheart?"

Alfie launched himself at the photographer, grabbled with him, suffered a punch himself just before he gripped the photographer by the hair and threw him against some railings behind us, cracked his face against the steel so that his nose spurted blood and his mouth was filled with it, hot and red and pouring from him. Alfie forced him to turn his head toward me and apologise for having said 'sweetheart' just before he made him apologise for 'yid-cap'. Alfie tore him upward, positioned him behind the stand once more. Calmly, Alfie stepped right around him and straightened out his cap and coat. He put his arm around me once more.

In the photograph, Alfie's left eyelid was almost entirely shut from the swell of a black eye. He had his other hand lifted to tip his cap toward the photographer – and he was grinning.


vi

Plucking cotton-candy from a cone, we sat on a bench and Alfie told me that he had allowed a family to take the sixth flat on the fifth floor of our tenement and that was a hard punch into my chest because it was another form of goodbye, left unsaid. Sullenly, I asked, "What family?"

"Jewish fam'ly," he answered.

I pulled a strip of pinkish fluff and plopped it in my mouth. I pulled another and he leaned forward, mouth open. I almost placed it on his tongue before I snatched it back, ate it, and smiled at his groan of frustration, my sadness momentarily forgotten. I glanced around us, looking at all the other couples wandering around between the booths. "Well, that narrows it down, Alfie. What, you want to be a landlord now?"

"I ain't chargin' 'em," he muttered lowly.

Sharply, my eyes darted toward him. "What? Really?"

"Really."

"Why not?"

I had been so distracted by him that I had forgotten about the ball of cotton-candy still held in my hand until he reached around my shoulders and yanked it from me, shrugging his shoulders as he put it in his mouth. He mumbled something and I only heard two words 'sick – mum' before he feigned a cough.

"Alfie."

Pursing his lips, he tried not to look at me. Alfie had a soft spot for me – and it was more than just soft from some affection between us, he was soft on me completely, never liked to upset me, never liked to refuse me anything, never liked to lie to me either. So, I tore off another curl of cotton-candy for him and held it out toward him and waited. Slowly, his eyes flicked from the carousel, toward the distant trailers. Finally, reluctantly, they settled on me.

His resolve crumbled and he let out a low sigh because he knew that he was soft on me, too.

"Well, this Jewish woman – she's got a son, yeah, what looks after 'er, because she ain't well, is she? And they ain't got much in the way'a money, mind. I figure, I ain't usin' the flat – me brother ain't gonna be usin' it – not now we got this whole –…" – he almost said war, but it dropped from his mouth and became muffled by the mud so that we could pretend it had never been there at all – "… and she 'elped me Mum out when she first came to London. So, I tol' 'em to 'ave the flat but not to mess up our good cleanin' job on it, o' course. And -… Oh, don' you give me that look, Willa –…"

"Alfie Solomons, saviour of stray dogs and sickly women – oh, and their sons," I whistled, grinning at him, delighting in how he shifted on the bench and rolled his eyes.

"Right, well, we can't let this get out to anyone, all right, darlin'? Can't 'ave 'alf of London thinkin' I'm some kind of – messiah, yeah," he replied.

"Oh, I'm sure half of London thinks many things of you, Alfie, but nothing close to messiah."

"Is that right, is it? Well, Ms Sykes, what do they say about Alfie Solomons, eh?"

"That he beats photographers in his spare time, and he can't throw a ball into a bucket to save his life," I retorted, smirking at him. I nodded my head toward a nearby booth full of little trinkets that could be won for just that, tossing a ball into a bucket at different distances. Alfie glanced over and then grinned, jumping from the bench and taking me with him by the hand.

"We'll see what they think after this, won't we, Willa?"


vii

Off he went to war. Off went almost all the boys and men of Bell Road along with him. There was still a handful of them left behind, those who suffered a wonky leg or funny heart, those who feared war and fled into the countryside, those who had rich parents with rich connections who could find the right paperwork which exempted them from that old muck and tumble on the frontlines. Butcher never left, but most of his boys did. It got worse in the war, given that all our fellas were being shot and that meant the women had to fill boots not usually made for them. Somehow the earth still seemed to spin even without the men; especially without the men.

The war meant that Butcher finally looked around himself and saw that he had suddenly become vulnerable, exposed. His enemies who had also avoided that old muck and tumble on the frontlines knew it, too. The war also meant that Butcher was sniffing – always sniffing, scratching at his nostrils which had been raw and sore from snow, from nerves and from anxiety and from an addiction he would not admit. His hands were always lost in tremors. He used to sit in the office because he had become weirdly paranoid, told himself that the coppers would come for him and if not the coppers, then some old enemy from some older time, because people like him did not live very long. He said it repeatedly, shouted it even, so much so that it became routine.

But nobody really listened to him, anymore.


viii

Charlotte had found herself a beau, a little scrawny lad all of sixteen, and 'beau' was what they said in France for boyfriend, Esther told me, though how she knew this, I was not sure. He filled the spot of the lads gone off to war, sorted out the boxes of aprons and snow, but that had all slowed down quite a bit. Charlotte liked him because he liked books, she told me, he could quote characters and he could talk about themes, talk about abstract things which most of us never really considered worth talking about, at least not in the flat on Bell Road where the most important thing was who had stolen what and for how much it might sell.

Even Charlotte herself had never read books until this lad came around – and came around he did. He stood in front of the flat for our Charlotte, he did. I made him anxious, made him twitch because I used to stand in the doorway while he waited and watch him, look him up and down. I had this shoddy imitation of the way Alfie studied people, drank them in the first time that he saw them and assessed them. I had to do it. Esther was rarely there. Beth had tired of being Best Girl, she often dismissed her duties in favour of nights spent out with other girls from other neighbourhoods. I bathed the youngest girls. I clothed them. I settled them into makeshift beds. I brushed through tangled hair. I thought about Alfie in between. Who else would do it?

So, Charlotte had found herself a beau, this scrawny lad of sixteen.


ix

The dogs filled the courtyard looking for Alfie; warm, chocolate stares blinked out from doorways, awaiting scratches behind floppy ears, drooping muzzles dripping in white froth. But soon the dogs realised that Alfie was occupied by that old muck and tumble on the frontlines, so they drifted off into other tenements, sniffed around other bins for small morsels of food left behind. I strode through the courtyard of Bell Road, toward Victoria Lane. I was always first at the factory; an old habit which continued from my mornings spent with Alfie.

Once there, I rustled around my drawer and pulled out some paper. For a little while, I could only stare at its white, mocking blankness and think of what I was supposed to tell him, because what could possibly interest him over there? I started off about Charlotte, in my childish handwriting, started off in my terrible spelling. I told him about Bell Road and its sameness – told him about the dogs, too, because he had always been fond of them and I knew that he would think about them.

I told him that I missed him. I told him that I thought about him a lot. I asked if I was allowed to send him packages, because I had already started on some scarves for him. I was not sure if it was cold in France. I was not sure of anything about France, other than the fact that Alfie was there.

I told him that I would send the scarves anyway.


x

Esther had started on the snow, too. Her hands trembled badly. She was rarely there. If she was, it was only in the physical sense. Butcher had made her like that. He had made her want it, he had made her hands tremble like his and in between the trembles, he told her that he loved her. I understood that what Butcher had done was not from love – he had wanted Esther to depend on him more than she could herself. Only he got it wrong. She depended on the snow.

Not him.


xi

I started to feed the dogs for Alfie. I could hardly afford meat. I had small pieces of bread, some pieces of fat which seemed enough to please them all. I scratched floppy ears, wiped drool, and it meant that I had a couple of dogs trailing behind me into the courtyard or plodding alongside me toward the factory. Usually, the dogs drifted off into other alleyways. I wrote about it in another letter. He never wrote any letters of his own. I wasn't sure that the soldiers could write out there in the trenches.

I wrote a whole pile of letters left unsent, for a little while, on top of all the others that I did send, if only because I had told too much of myself in those unsent letters, told too much of my worries. I worried that there was something very wrong with Esther and I worried that it was becoming too hard for me to balance it all without her and I worried that Charlotte and her lad had become too close and I worried that myself and my lad might never be close again and I worried that I was not able to call him my lad at all, given the lingering ambiguity of us, having never fully admitted any attraction.

I wrote it all, in my wobbling scrawl that he had taught me, with words spelled out just like how they sounded for me.

I stuffed those too-much-of-me letters in the drawer; never mentioned after that.


xii

Bundling a towel around Josephine, I kneeled on the tiles and brushed through her ratty locks, smiling while she told me about her trip into Cannon Market with Charlotte. Josephine had been here only four months. She was ten, just a little wisp of a girl. She pressed a small hand against my shoulder, lifted a leg and shimmied around the towel. Once finished, she leaned forward and wrapped herself around me in a hug. I was speechless, surprised by her boldness – or fondness, rather.

"Thanks, Willa," she said.

Thickened layers of condensation fogged the windowpanes and filled the bathroom in a hazy warmth which was perhaps what drew out some muffled memories from the depths of my skull. Suddenly, I could remember Elsie and how she had once dried me off like I had just done for Josephine. The girl left me there, in the bathroom, to scoop the towels and drain the basin of its lukewarm water. Josephine had been the last girl to bathe in the whole flat, because she was both the newest and also the youngest.

Before I could do anything more, I sat there and wondered: when had I last thought about Elsie?


xiii

Esther had never claimed the body. Elsie had been buried somewhere out there, amongst the plots and flowers of other graves, but hers had never been visited. Elsie shared the soil like she had shared all other things in her life. I started to tell the other girls in the flat about her; frantically, obsessively, I told them. The girls listened, although it had come across like some uncharacteristic rambling on my part because never had I spoken so much before, never had I mentioned something so deeply personal. I told them that Elsie had been Best-Girl and that she had taught me tricks to unclip bracelets or pull necklaces. Josephine listened, alongside the other girls. I never told them about her death, rarely talked about death at all.

Given the war was in its second year then, there had been enough talk about death. There were widows in the streets now, children huddled around them, lost and penniless from war and the loss of fathers, loss of income for families ravaged by the war, all their boys and men plucked from them and left somewhere in the soil of France.

Esther had looked at those women one morning whilst I walked with her. She sniffed.

"Too much competition," she said. "Don't they know we were here first?"


xiv

Eventually I heard from other girls that soldiers had sent letters for them even if nothing had ever come from Alfie, which hurt me more than I could admit, because I thought it meant that he had tired of me. I had sent off letters attached with packages almost weekly, never certain that he had even received anything from me. I sent off those letters and sent off almost sent every inch of me along with them, but Alfie never answered – that was the thing about Alfie, expecting answers, rarely giving. I just kept that old routine; rose early, fed girls, fed dogs, fed myself somewhere in between, walked toward the factory and whittled out apron after apron for two bosses so spent on snow that it seemed meaningless, returned to that flat, fed dogs, fed girls, fed myself somewhere in between, bathed myself, bathed girls, tucked them into makeshift beds.

Sometimes, though, I found myself in the kitchen, smothered in the comfort of the girls' chatter and I sat there only to think about the trenches and what it must be like there. I thought about those telegrams and I thought that maybe Alfie had lost interest in me and then I thought – I thought, what if Alfie had died? Where would that telegram go? His brother was in those same trenches with him; his mother had been buried many years now.

If Alfie Solomons died in those trenches in France, who other than God would know about it?


xv

Finally came: a letter from Alfie, composed of a few simple lines. He wrote:

Willa,

Thanks for the scarves. Could really do with some socks. Sorry I didn't write sooner. They made me Captain. I have the most scarves of all these soldiers, so that must have counted for something when they were deciding on whether to make me Captain or not. Could easily clothe both our side and the enemy's side by now with them.

I miss you, Willa. Every second that I'm here, I miss you.

Alfie.


xvi

I cried from it, cried from laughter and sadness and something in-between. I cried even more because I thought it had been a telegram that first time that I saw it in the hands of the postman, thought that somehow, they had figured out who to send it to, thought that somehow, God had found finally told me all the way from the trenches. Captain, he wrote. I folded that letter, tucked it into the pocket of my skirts and scrunched my cuffs around my fist to smear away the tears which stained my cheeks, still wearing this goofy smile, the smile that only he ever brought out of me, even all the way from France.


xvii

Settling into the rhythm of the sewing-machine, I stitched socks for Alfie. I slid them into my pockets for his packages. I had practiced, over and over. Distracted by my thoughts, I heard the rattled screech of the rail once the steel-door was wheeled apart and thought that it was just the girls strolling in from those languid lunch-breaks spent lounging around the benches outside.

I heard the echoed shouts, the thump of boots. I understood very quickly.

Coppers.


xviii

Before I could sprint from them, I pulled the drawer open in a wild crack, tried to pull out all the papers that Alfie had written while he taught me to read and write, those papers which meant so much to me that I could not think to run without them. But the coppers were already on me, had already slammed the drawer on my right hand, had already hauled me upward and slammed me against the table – and I felt one of them behind me, in a position that was much too like that sensation in the pantry of hands in places which were not permitted by me, a body pressed too close against mine, pressing and pressing into places which were mine, mine and only mine, so that I bucked and kicked like some wild animal –…

I felt a hand grip my hair and slam my face against the table, like Esther had slammed me against the countertop years beforehand. I went limp just like I had then, too. I slumped against some foreign body which shouted at me about stolen goods. I was taken somewhere cold and damp and it rattled me like my teeth had rattled after I was thrown against the table. I was in this wagon, tossed around, dragged out again and I must have mumbled something because one of the coppers lifted me by my hair and said, "Listen to this one, eh, another fuckin' bog-trotter over 'ere stealin' what she can before she fucks off back to her caravan in Ireland, eh, fuckin' paddy-girl thinkin' she can-…"

His punch was sudden and hard and knocked me right out.


xix

Sometime around midnight, I cracked the crust from my bruised sockets and saw that I was in a cell with Nellie and Rosie. I was laid out on a cot like some corpse, hands folded over my chest, and my right-hand was slit open from the drawer crushing it but still I could wiggle my fingers. Blood drippled even more. I winced from the pain of it, from the grind of my bones. In all the years that the factory had been there, the coppers had never even come close to a raid because Butcher had always paid them off. Stunned, I said it aloud, too, said it through a mouth which felt numb and slack and which I hoped that I would not end up like Daisy with soft words all sloppy and poured from lips left dysfunctional.

"He ain't the top-dog anymore, Willa," Nellie whispered fearfully. "He lost control of Harrow. Didn't Esther tell you?"


xx

It turned out that Esther had not told me a lot of things about Butcher; she had not told me that most of the lads who had worked for him simply left the factory altogether, either for the frontlines or another place, left out of spite for him or left out of desire for the kind of wealth that Butcher could no longer offer, not after he spent all that cash from the aprons on piles and piles of snow snorted into nostrils now coated in thickened scabs from some kind of infection in his septum. He had lost Harrow and it spilled into territory around Bullock Road. He had only a quarter of Camden Town left and even that was a loose grip.

"Didn't Esther tell you?"


xxi

Held in a small, blackened cell, I was chained to a chair and held beneath a bright, crackling light. The coppers came in and out, in and out. Rosie and Nellie had been released hours beforehand, but I was still there. It made my skin feel prickly and sore. Finally, I was let out. While I walked out of the cell and into the hall, a pair of coppers smiled at me – smiled, so that it made my stomach churn, and I had the feeling that I had been left out of some joke, left out of some loop again, and that there were so many loops that I felt myself surrounded by them, like the nooses of a hangman. I turned from Rowland Street, turned onto Dilworth Avenue. I turned and turned and turned for Bell Road.

I wanted to find Esther.


xxi

There had been no dogs in the courtyard. There were always dogs in the courtyard, always a handful of them sniffing around barrels, others sat around the doorways, summoned by the clatter of my boots which had become familiar to them. Neither were there the children who usually ran between the bedsheets. Neither were there any women. Neither were there babies with those women. Slowly, I squelched through the mud which soaked the courtyard and clambered upward onto the staircase, my boots creaking against it, my legs oddly numb.

I stepped onto the landing of the fifth floor. I came around the corner of the row, looking for the fourth flat, our flat.

And its door was open.

And there was sickly-sweet blackness on its threshold.

I had stumbled. Never was that door left ajar, unlike the other neighbours' doors on this row, because the neighbours' children liked to dip in and out of the flats between playtime, but ours was different. I could feel a trickle along my spine, like a cold droplet of water which had slipped beneath my collar and slid downward toward my tailbone. I thought the tenements had shifted beneath me, wobbled and slipped into the wet earth of the courtyard but I looked around and saw that it was all still there, but this still felt like some horrid dream, the way that my limbs moved as if I did not control them, as if I was suddenly in a place without having really walked there, having simply appeared there – only this was real and I had walked here and I was here.

And I could feel that there was something in that flat and that it was still there just like I was still here.

I heard voices and knew that I was right.

I heard them as if I was underwater and the words floated down toward me, popped in my brain, all sharp edges, those words, but somehow the meaning was lost on me. Then, a man came and stood in that threshold. Willowy and dark, his arms were raised in thick, lumpy scars which wiggled like worms beneath the flesh.

He glanced toward me.

Smothered beneath all that water in my brain, it occurred to me that he had not yet recognised me as one of Esther's girls.

I was still stood there, like in the pantry. I stood there because I knew why there had been no dogs and no women and no children. I knew it perfectly and suddenly all at once. The dogs had fled the gunshots, the screams; the doors of each flat, rows upon rows, had been bolted and shut and women stood with children clutched against them behind those same doors. Rows upon rows.

Only ours had been open.

Again, that man glanced over. His dark eyebrows furrowed, a small crinkle held there between them, his suspicion seeping through into the lines of his skin. He opened his mouth, as if he might speak. As if he might say, aren't you one of Esther's girls?

Cracking apart in a wild clatter, the door of the sixth flat sprung open behind him. Out stepped a thin, young, lanky boy who said, "Lizzie, did you remember to get Mum her medicine?"

Bewildered, I fumbled for a response, but sickly-sweet blackness filled my mouth, seeped out from my gums, drizzled onto my boots in some dumb muteness. Perhaps he had expected my inability to form words, too stunned to find them within myself, because he added, "Oh, don't tell me you forgot – fine, I'll go get it. Just come inside and help me run her a bath, will you?"

He had a crop of black curly hair barely contained beneath a small, black cap and thick eyebrows held tight over intelligent eyes, eyes which screamed: please, please get inside this flat before he realises that we do not know each other and please, please, please –….

The other man had watched all of this, that crinkle still there between his eyebrows. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette and plopped it between his lips. The blister-worms on his arms seemed to shift with his movement. He looked off toward the other side of the hall, bored and dismissive.

In that moment, that one moment, I was able to look behind his legs. I saw Esther there, slumped against the wall. Her skull was like the blackberries had been in that jar in the pantry, all soft and ground into mush. She sat there like a limp doll, and my legs almost went because I saw other bodies slumped behind her, but I tore my eyes away and looked upward at that boy, still there in the doorway, still on its threshold.

He held my stare and mouthed, "Please."

Please, please, please –…

Jolted into action, I nodded, stepped forward and said, "I got it, Harry, I got the medicine."

He held the door open. He held it open and I stumbled toward him like an infant in its first steps, stilted and awkward and fumbling until I found the hall; the door shut behind us, softly, gently. The warmth of the hall reached beneath my coat and curled around me. The roots crept upward from the floorboards, like in the pantry, latched around my limbs and held me tight in a merciless grip, sprouted in an anxiety which announced itself in the form of goosepimples on my skin.

I collapsed against the floorboards, right there in his home. I was trembling, sinking my sharp nails into my scalp, into my skull, sinking into me. There was bile in my throat; it smothered all my words, all my thoughts, trapped there, like stones.

Despite the sandpaper touch of my tongue, I said, "Thank you. Thank you, thank you –…"

It was my nerves which made me say it, too, not only my gratitude, because each bundle had become so fraught that I felt myself sizzle and burn beneath each crackle and I had to say something, or I would have fizzled out myself. It made me jittery and distraught in front of him. He fidgeted with his hands, glancing fearfully at the door behind me, as if he suddenly realised that I was right and he regretted it – but a steely look filled his eyes and he nodded, lips held in a tight line. The ringing in my eardrums dimmed into a rattle, like a tambourine clapping itself against my temple and I realised that he had spoken, that he was speaking – and he said, he said –…

"O-Oliver – but everyone calls me Ollie, you know."