A/N: I made some choice decisions in this chapter. It had to be done. I'm basing it off an idea that I hope will work out. We'll figure that out as we go lol. Anyway, thanks for all the feedback! To any guests that reviewed, apologies that I cannot answer you directly but know it is greatly appreciated. Onward...


twenty-eight


There was a room at the end of the hall; its powder-blue walls had been left bare, its wooden floorboards untouched by much furniture apart from a lonely chair and another pile of books with spines cracked and worn, because Alfie had already finished them many times over. We had always called it a spare-room, unused, rarely visited. It made me think of a room that had been slotted into a dollhouse, wedged between all others, too small for even the delicate hands of children to reach.

It had been forgotten. There had never been anything to fill it, apart from old pieces of furniture no longer wanted. It had never been the house that we really cared for, either, for that one had been lost years beforehand. That house was in Margate. But I touched these walls and breathed stirring dust like the shimmering remains of a dream formed in me already. A dream made of crib and blankets and dangling toys carved into stars.

For many years, I had strolled around shops with Alfie, my hand tucked in the crook of his arms, drinking in the little displays in each window. But I had never allowed myself to look at those toys strung from little cords and bopping around in slow twirls. I had often asked Alfie to buy those train-sets for Elijah and made one excuse or another to pop into some other shop while he did it. Sometimes, I caught myself looking longingly at prams, quickly shaken from my thoughts with a heavy weight anchoring me against the earth. There were no stars for me then, carved or otherwise. Just a great big blanket of blue.

Now, I was thirty-three or something more.

I had been afraid to peel off my skirts and look at myself. I felt there was too much knowing in looking at that gentle mound that had formed around my belly-button, already like a shell in its faint hardness. Once again, I was struck by how the word 'love' had never been powerful enough. There had to be something stronger, something more passionate that I could call it, that feeling of touching my own body as if I had never understood it before; never understood its power and its strength with such bluntness, never felt assured enough to think that there was beauty found in each dip and curve and marred line of scarring that made me.

Three months, I thought. For three months I had not known my own body, had not noticed what it tried to tell me. More than three months – maybe my whole life.

I had never known my own mother. I had been surrounded by women ever since I was a baby, always in a world of imagined femininity, but I had never known a mother – I had known Esther, and through the years, I had nurtured a fear buried deep, a fear that I was not deserving of motherhood because of her.

Esther had spoiled me, she had dripped her cruelty into me, and any child borne unto me would taste it, too. It would be formed in it, like a black liquid that I used to imagine coated my insides, pooling in my womb. It was dark and unspoken, this odd fear of mine. I had never said it aloud, not properly. It seemed mad, to think of it like that, like she had been a tree and her roots had intertwined with mine, overtaken them, forced me into movement because of it. Her tree was all rotted bark and dead leaves.

I had never known my mother; I had never known what it was to be one.

But I would forge her, I thought, this mother that I wanted to be. I would make her like I made aprons, gloves, socks – she would be whittled from thread like all things that came from my hands, stitched around her fuzzing seams, held in tight until she became what I had imagined her to be. I had always tried to be better, first for Alfie, so that he might like me and think of me as more than thief and bog-trotter like all other people. Then, I tried for myself, spurred by the sewing-machine and honest means, things I never had before.

I was thirty-three. Maybe more.

I had never known a mother, and I had never known my own age. There was a lot of things I did not know. But I did know that I still possessed a lot more heart than Esther had been able to stomp out with slaps and punches and all those other things in-between. I looked at my own stomach and told myself that Esther had not made me; there was no black liquid. I was never as bad as she had let me think I was.

Alfie had been the first person to ever show me that.

For all his shady dealings in the bakery with rum and blood, he had heart and kindness and he had always been soft on me. From the very start, he had been like that. I figured if there was that goodness in me, and all that goodness in him, it had to blend together and make the best that both of us could offer. There would be a room in a new house, one made of all the things that we had already made in our minds, and it would be far from here. We would paint it and fill it with the best furniture and make it just like we had always imagined it.

And so there could be only colour, then.

ii

That morning, Alfie had already left for a meeting across town. He had taken Ollie with him, kissed my cheek before he left and told me that he would be at the bakery for noon. I wanted to tell him, but I wanted it to be special, too.

I whistled for Cyril who trotted alongside me through the courtyard. After what had happened with Caleb, Alfie had the drivers changed regularly. Nobody could know too much about where we were meant to be and specific times were blurred, given in rough estimates rather than concrete numbers, because Alfie thought it safer. The cobbles of the courtyard were wet, my boots clacking against them as I walked into the bakery and downstairs into its labyrinth of corridors with barrels at every corner.

I settled at my sewing-machine and felt Cyril drape himself against my boots, shuffling himself until he was comfortable. I talked to him like I always did, pulling out fabrics and asking which he liked, taking blinking eyes or twitches from his ears as approval. I thought I looked quite batty anytime that I talked to Cyril. I had told him about the baby before I had even told Alfie. He had only limply wagged his tail, stirred more by my scratches around his drooping muzzle than the news itself, I figured.

"Don't be jealous," I told him, though it was somewhat smothered by the loud clacking of my machine. "Technically, this is our second baby, because you're still ours, Cyril. You will still get as many treats and just as much attention, won't you?"

Cyril rolled out his tongue to lick his paw, then decided it was too much bother to truly clean himself. I smiled at him, toeing his paw gently with the tip of my boot.

"You are the laziest sod on this earth," I said fondly. "Worse than Alfie, you know."

I had woven a small pair of booties, pale yellow in colour, cupped in the palm of my hand. I had made a lot of booties and socks and bonnets for Charlie, Elijah, Ben and Karl. But never had I understood just how tiny they truly were until it was my turn to hold them like that. I placed them in a little box, plain and unimportant before those booties touched its bottom and I lined it in wrapping-paper, tied it with a sash of purple – the same sash that had tied the paper from France that Alfie had bought me as a gift, all those years ago, finished in a neat bow.

iii

That night, I had a conversation with God; I had not spoken to Him in a while, not with knees pressed uncomfortably into the hardwood floor and with my fingers laced together, my elbows kneading the padding of our bed. Alfie spoke to God far more than I ever did, but his words were in Hebrew and mine were much less formal. I spoke to Him like I imagined one spoke to a friend, intercut with words that I thought sounded holy – like blessed and eternal gratitude.

I thanked Him for this gift and for all the good things that had come before it, because there had been good things. I prayed that there might be more acceptance for a child of Gypsy and Jewish blood than there ever had been for Alfie and me when we were growing up. I asked that Alfie might be overjoyed by the news, that he might not be fear being a father the way that he had ever since the war had changed him.

And I asked that there would never be another war like the one we already had. War would take a boy, make a soldier where I wanted only his happiness and safety. A daughter might be lonely in a war faraway, like I had once been, but her loneliness was better than trenches and the sickly-sweet blackness to be found there. I would know. The only people who ever asked for war were those who had never fought in one. I knew that, too.

If it were a boy, I hoped that he was not dogged by the legacy of rum and that he might learn a craft and never lead him to dark, echoing fields or nights spent bitter and angry. If it were a girl, I hoped that she knew her worth sooner and more certainly than her mother ever had. I hoped that she never learned about flats like those on Fetter Road and what happened to the other girls there. I hoped she loved her parents the way that I had never been able to love mine, because I had not known them.

There would be no violence for them, either, never a hand raised for more than a slap on the bottom and never shouts or screams in that house we made for them. They would never know Esther, because she was poison and I had made sick from her enough to recognise it.

I asked that they know love, and if there was a holier word for it than that, I didn't know it yet, but maybe there was a way to put it in Hebrew and maybe it was enough just to feel it, to want it so badly that I would have given anything in myself for my child to feel it, too.

Finally, I asked that we make it to Margate and away from the black fumes of London that might fester in their lungs; that they know the ocean before they know factories, that they know funfairs before poor-houses and the kind of poverty that I knew when I was a kid. I asked for health and that the pain in Alfie's hip and spine might be made softer, less intense or taken away entirely, if I could have been bold enough to ask for it. I talked about the goodness in him. He thought that he did not want children.

And I told God that that was only because he thought he was not good enough for them.

But if I knew better, then surely, God did, too.

iv

The telephone rang at seven. He spoke from the other end, soft and low. There was a delay. There was also that rustling sound. I asked if he was in the office and he mumbled something brief. I said, "I wanted to talk to you tonight."

"We'll talk," he said. He sighed, a great, gulping sigh. Its tiredness ran along the wire and that space between us and made me feel worn, too. "We'll talk, love."

I left the box on the bed for him to find.

v

I wanted to tell him first, but I went to find Franny. I brought Cyril, even though Franny normally frowned on dogs in the house. She had always kept her house quite prim and she shuddered at the mere thought of stray hairs drawn out from his scratches, dragging his paw against his side and showering her lovely rugs. But she made an allowance for Cyril, whose moping face softened most hearts without any effort on his part. Elijah liked him, too, and Ben had taken to lifting his flopping ears and letting them fall, giggling in delight. It was late, though, and both boys had been put to bed only an hour beforehand.

"You look pale, Willa."

I smiled weakly, sinking into the armchair in her front-room. "Tired."

She watched me closely. "Have you seen Alfie today?"

"No. He's been busy."

"I'll bet," she said. There was a ripple of sympathy in the spasm around her lips. "Do you want to talk?"

I smoothed out the crinkles in my skirt, bouncing my leg. "I've been afraid to talk to anyone about it."

Again, there was a ripple. "Of course, darling."

My eyebrows furrowed, lips pinched in confusion. "Did you guess?"

"Well, I heard about the doctor's visit."

"You did?" I stared at her, taken aback. But, if I really thought about it, it was not that surprising at all. Alfie had sent men to follow me around London before. It was likely, then, that word of an appointment with a doctor had leaked and he had heard about it, but he was biding his time until I said anything. "Who told you, eh?"

"Ollie."

She flicked on the lamp alongside her and I saw a redness around her eyes, her cheeks scrubbed as if she had drawn tissues against them. It was odd, but I thought it rude to point it out so bluntly unless I thought she had a proper reason.

"Well," I grinned, "I suppose I should just say it."

She seemed perplexed, noting how I had practically pushed myself to the edge of my seat. "What? What do you mean?"

"I'm pregnant," I said. "I was afraid to say the words out loud. I wanted to show Alfie – I made socks, like – well, it seems silly now, when I put it like that. But I thought it might be a better way – like a surprise. But he hates surprises, like me, so I tried to make it a less of a shock than simply saying the words."

"Willa," she breathed out. She looked stunned, her body sagging against her seat. "Oh, Willa."

I waited for tears or a hug. I had hugged her after she had told me about Elijah and Ben, hugged her after she had given birth to them, too. I wanted that sense of celebration, craved it so much that I was the one to push toward her first, taking her hands in mine. And I felt her hands trembling and tears welled in my own eyes.

"I have wanted this for so long, Fran," I whispered. "You know that."

She had melted into a bleared smudge of colour from my tears trickling over, slipping along my cheeks. I cocked my head, trying to brush them away with my sleeves. Then, she crushed me, wrapping her arms tightly around me and breathing against my throat; the heat of it contrasted with the dampness of my tears and I laughed. I laughed for no reason and every reason.

"I want to tell Ada. I want to tell Daisy," I said. "I want to tell anybody who will listen. But I have yet to tell Alfie."

She swept the pads of her thumbs across my cheeks, her own eyes glistening. "I know. I know."

"Do you think he'll like it? The socks, I mean – silly, like I said –…"

"No, not silly," she interrupted. "Beautiful. Thoughtful. Like you, Willa."

I scoffed at her, pushing back onto the armchair. "Now you're being soft."

"It's true," she said. Her voice cracked and tenderness poured between each fracture.

I felt my cheeks flush red. "He'll want a Jewish name, I'll bet. All his mocking of Ollie for wanting to call his first boy after himself – he'll want it to be Alfie Junior if it's a boy. Even if it's a girl, I'll bet."

She smiled just like I did, but there was a droopiness in its corners, a struggle to hold it. "I'll bet," she echoed.

"I'll find a place for a Gypsy name, somewhere. I have to tell my uncle, too. He'll want to come and see me."

She was quiet. When she did speak, her words were the only thing that I heard, as if there was no more sound; Cyril and his snoring had faded, the shuffling of the boys in their beds overhead had been drowned out. It was only us. She said, "I'm happy for you, Willa. After all these years, eh? I always knew you would make a great mother."

I inhaled those words like I did the floral scent of her home. "I want to be, Fran. So badly."

"Look at how you hold our boys," she murmured. "You were meant for it."

I laughed again, and it was such a girlish laugh, full of happiness that I was almost shy about it, covering my cheeks with my cuffs again and wiping away tears. "I hope Alfie is happy, too."

She looked behind me. I knew she looked behind me, as if drawn by some painting there. But I knew her wall was blank, that all the portraits were on the other side of the room, where the fireplace was. "He will be," she said. "He will be."

vi

The light in the hall had been the only one that I could see from the street. The rest of the house was dark, and I wondered if he had slunk off to bed already. But if he had found that box, surely, he would have understood what it meant, and it would have kept him awake long enough to wait for me? Alfie was a clever man, and nothing could have been more obvious than those little socks.

Closing the door, just after Cyril had followed in behind me, I heard that rustling in the front-room. I thought it was his Torah, perhaps taken out to revise another paragraph or two. I called out to him, but there came no answer. So, I pushed open the door of the front-room and found him slumped on the sofa, staring blankly ahead of himself.

There were papers on the drawer alongside him. There was a bottle of rum with them, too, unopened.

"Alfie?"

"'ello, love."

"Are you all right?"

"I'm good, Willa. I'm all right. 'ow 'bout you, darlin'?"

He had a frame in his hands; our ketubah, that he had handwritten, and which was always placed in our bedroom. From my boots upward into my chest came a low, buzzing dread that he had seen the box left for him, and I thought, he found the box and it made him blue and angry and bitter and all the things that I had prayed he would never be.

"What are you looking at that for, Alfie?"

"Bein' sentimental, is all," he answered.

I swallowed, my eyes flicking toward the staircase. "You went upstairs?"

He hummed, a deep rumble from the back of his throat. "Yeah. I'll put it back in a minute. I just wanted to read it again."

"I left you a gift," I said. "Didn't you see it?"

I reached for the lamp alongside him and switched on the orange light that brightened the room and cast shadows over him, playing with the lines of his face. He blinked once, dragging his hand along his face as if to hide from me.

Only I saw that he looked poorly.

His hair was greasy, held up in strands with small gaps in between that showed his scalp littered in flakes from dryness. Those patches around his face, that only two nights beforehand I had lathered in the creams from Ripley Street, had been torn open as if he scratched them. I felt as if I had been blind and somehow been granted sight in that moment. My eyes fluttered downward. I saw the papers, stamped with the date and signature of his old Jewish doctor, but he snatched them away.

He stood, looming tall in front of me. "No, I didn't. I'll go up now, yeah? We should get some sleep."

I thought of how it sounded eerily similar to what Tommy had said, out of the blue, when he wanted our conversation to end before it could hurt him: and I think we should sleep now, Willa.

"No, no," I said quickly. "Just – just wait here, would you?"

"I'm tired, love. Knackered. Could do with a kip."

"I know, I know. Please, Alf?"

His eyes seemed yellow where there should have been white. "Fine."

"Two seconds, I promise."

"Go slowly up them stairs, Willa, you'll trip," he called out, hearing my thumping boots. He fell against the sofa and I heard him sigh.

I found the box, right where it had been. I assumed that he had passed it without a glance, walking toward the ketubah that he caught his attention. I gripped the box with trembling hands, my stomach twisting into a ball of excitement. I was terrified and thrilled all at once. I thought it would make him happy where he felt only blue, that it might lull him from his stupor.

At the bottom of the stairs, I saw him through the narrow slit where the hinges held the doorframe. He had remained exactly where he was, though his elbows now rested on his knees, head bent low between them, hands scratching at the nape of his neck. I walked in, and those hands dropped to dangle loosely between his thighs. He looked at the box and there was not much light in his eyes at all, but I pushed it toward him and scooted onto my knees in front of him. I laced my fingers and felt like I had in prayer; heard, understood.

"I wanted to tell you sooner," I whispered. Already, tears prickled at my eyes and I held that watery, uncertain smile before him. "I went to the doctor."

His head darted up, a flash of pure terror on his features. "You what?"

"I had to, Alf, I –…"

"What did 'e fuckin' say?"

The sudden tremor of anger surprised me. I realised that he had misunderstood somewhere. "I didn't go to your Jewish doctor. I made an appointment across town."

His forehead smoothed of its hard lines, mouth loosened from its tense purse. He looked worry, instead, and asked, "Are you – Are you sick, Willa?"

"Look in the box, Alf."

He glanced at me, brows drawn as he undid the sash and placed it gently alongside him. He remembered just where it had come from. He pulled off the top of the box with a small, delicate pop and I watched his stare fall onto those yellow socks, which I had so carefully placed on a crinkling line of tissue-paper to make it look nicer for him.

"No," he mumbled. "No."

"Yes," I grinned, my hands latching onto his forearms to pull myself closer to him. I balanced on my knees still and felt the heat of his flesh beneath mine. He was clammy, terribly so. I saw beads of sweat on his temple and worried that I had upset him – that he might throw it away, even.

But he only touched those socks with his fingertips and said, "No. No –…"

His glassy stare lifted and landed on my stomach. He reached out, then drew his hand back hesitantly. I grabbed it and let him touch my stomach, palm flat against it. "I don't think you can feel anything yet," I said. "Three months is all. Maybe it takes longer for him to say hello."

"Him," Alfie repeated.

"I don't know that either," I laughed, squeezing his hand. "That also takes a bit longer, though I could ask some cousins who might be able to guess. I hear Polly Gray has never been wrong before."

He blinked at me stupidly and tore his hand away as if scalded. "No."

Again, that horrid little sound of 'no'. I did not want to acknowledge it, pretended not to hear it. "I told Franny today – no one else, I swear. I just – I wanted to say it out loud, you know. Make it real. Because it has to be real, now."

He stood up, startling me. His arms were useless at his sides, his mouth was slack.

I moved to follow him, flushing with fear. "I-I was really happy, when I found out. I thought you might – I know you don't like surprises." A nervous flutter of laughter left me, totally unlike myself. "I told Fran that you hate them as much as I do. But she was happy for us, too, you know. I would have told Ollie, if he had been there, but he was out."

"Ollie were with me."

"Oh." I fumbled for better words. "I can tell him tomorrow, maybe."

Maybe.

"I can't," he said.

Rolling waves of nausea came from my stomach and crashed into my throat, the remnants spat from my mouth. "What do you mean, 'can't'?

Would he leave me?

"I can't lie to you."

I stepped backward. I heard my own words laced with fear and fury all mixed together. "About what?"

For a moment, I was so overwhelmed by that knot of fear and sickness that I found it hard to think at all, but I heard our words played over like an old record in my brain and it occurred to me that he had asked about the doctor as if he had known that I was there – or that Franny had known, when it seemed now that that was not quite the truth. I said that I had been to the doctor – not that I was there for myself, necessarily, and I looked at the letters in his hands with dumb horror.

"D-Did you – Did you go to see the doctor this week, Alfie?"

He swallowed thickly. "I went this week. And the week before that. I went when you was with Tom."

"Is it your sciatica? Are you in pain?"

He was silent.

"Alfie?"

"It's me skin."

"Your skin? But I got those creams – they work, for any skin condition – the lady there told me, if you have bad skin –…"

"It goes deeper than me skin," he told me. "I'm not well, Willa."

I had not heard the stutter of my own heart, but I felt it, like a violent shock through my chest that felt like the punch of a copper in an alleyway that I had suffered when I was twelve. And I felt it again, and again, until I thought it might never end. I had that frantic need to move my hands, that impulse that had always struck me in moments of great distress, when I looked to hold things, shuffle them around, do anything that meant I did not have to know.

There was a great pain in knowing. The Gypsies had always told me that.

"Then I'll go back to Ripley Street in the morning," I said. I looked at the curtains, realising that we had not closed them, and it was dark out, now, the whole street could see us if they passed. I rushed toward them, all the while babbling at him: "That lady has other stuff there, whole shelves of jars and – and she knows quite a lot about what to do, she was always trying to get me to buy more. I thought, 'that's an old Gypsy trick', because Johnny used to pull that one, too – draw them in with one product, make them leave with an armful of another."

Out on the street, before I had fully closed the curtains, I saw a woman with a pram.

From the sofa, the box slid and fell. I jolted at the sound. I rushed for it before he could even bend, picking it up and placing it back on the cushions. I fluffed them, moved them around.

"And if she doesn't know what to do, there's more out there – loads of places. Johnny could send me a whole Bible of names. He knows every Gypsy that can make a good concoction to help you. Remember what you said about them? Just leaves and horseshit mixed together, that stuff. But it works. It has to work, otherwise they wouldn't make it, and nobody would bother buying it. But it helped your skin, the first time, didn't it?"

"Willa," he called out softly. "Darlin', come and sit with me."

"Well, it did, didn't it? It helped."

"It ain't the same now, love. The doctor says –…"

"He just wants your money," I tutted. I could not control the harsh, rocking twitches that ran through my hands. "Just wants everybody in the Jewish community to know you're visiting him and not some other doctor. Well, that's fine for him – but he shouldn't be scaring you, telling you things that aren't –…"

"True," he finished. "They're true, Willa. 'e weren't lyin' to me. I can feel it."

Beneath that saturated orange light, he looked all the more corpselike for his weak pallor and tiredness. I spun away from it, moving out into the hall. I clucked for Cyril madly, even more when he did not immediately rise from his bed in the kitchen. He peeked out at me, blinking slowly.

"We'll take Cyril for a walk. You'll feel a lot better then, with some fresh air."

"We live in London," he said. He let out a little chuckle, and somehow it made me furious to hear it. "The freshest thing out there is the latest cloud o' smoke spat from one o' them chimneys nearby. Now, come and sit with me a minute, Willa. You're runnin' yourself ragged, sweet'eart."

"Well, it'll do you good anyway! Out of this house – it'd clear your head."

"We gotta talk 'bout our baby, don't we?"

The softness of his words, the pleading undertone, soothed me for just a moment. I nodded, nodded like I could not stop myself from doing it, and approached his hand held out toward me like I was a skittish animal. He led me back into the front-room, coaxed me to sit beside him on the sofa, his hands still cupped around mine.

"Got nothin' but proper shocks, this week," he said slowly. "First, the doctor –…"

I flinched and tried to pull from his grip, but he held on tighter.

"And now – what we never thought we would 'ave –…"

I slowed, staring into his eyes. "You want this – with me – don't you, Alfie?"

He laughed again, a resounding chuckle from the depths of his chest. "Y'know, I reckon Charlie Chaplin can speak words in 'is films, with no fuckin' sound at all, better than I ever fuckin' can. Wish I could write me own fuckin' cards instead o' talkin', me, 'cause I only go and fuck it up. I say the wrong things. Never could think right."

"Backwards and wrong," I reminded him.

He smiled. "Backwards and wrong. But this ain't the time for that, is it? Willa, I always been afraid o' babies, afraid o' kids."

"You look after Elijah and Ben," I argued. "I've seen you with Tommy's boy, too."

"Ain't the same. I can 'and them back the moment they start pissin' themselves and wailin'," he grinned, playfully swiping at my cheek.

"Yet you hold onto Ollie when he does the same."

"Oh, I'll tell 'im you said that."

I felt my smile fade. "Did Franny know, then?"

"If Ollie knew, Franny did."

"You would make a great father."

He smiled fondly at me. "And there wouldn't be a better Mum on this earth than you."

"Sick," I said. I loathed the word, shuddered at the sound of it. "Is it – what is it?"

He watched me, his gaze drifting from my eyes to my mouth and all around until he found me again. "It looked like gold out there, in the trenches."

"What?"

"Like a cloud," he murmured. His hands fell from mine, he looked at the floorboards. The shadows stole him from me, for I could not see him clearly anymore, with the lamp positioned behind me and blocked by my body. "And it 'ad this funny smell to it, like – like spice, or somethin'. And some fellas walked right through it and a couple 'ours after, they weren't well, neither. Made 'em itch somethin' rotten, made 'em – and I never thought it 'ad gotten to me. I wore them fuckin' masks like they told me. So, 'ow could it 'ave gotten to me?"

I felt the first wracking shiver run along his spine when I touched him, placing my hands on him to soothe him – but I felt that quiver and it terrified me, because I knew that he wept beneath me, curled against my chest. I had never seen Alfie fall apart so completely. I had seen him cry – but he had never cried with such sorrow in each stuttered breath drawn into himself, never gripped me so tightly; never had so much fear in him.

Like a child, I said, "But it's our turn."

He did not hear me. He clung to me, instead.

I said again, "It's our turn. We – We're supposed to be happy, now. No more blueness. Because it's been two years. And I don't – it can't happen now. That isn't fair. It's our turn."

I felt nothing, then; pure and blissful numbness, because I thought that there had been a mistake. He had been wrong to see that Jewish doctor. He should have told me, and we would have planned to find a Gypsy who would know better. It was that simple. They saw things that ordinary people could not – well, that's all there is to it, I reasoned. In the morning, I would call Johnny and he would find us a good Gypsy who could touch Alfie's skin and know. How could there be any pain in knowing, when it was only dry patches that some new cream would solve? How could there be any pain in knowing, when all it would take was leaves and horseshit mixed together to cure him?

"Cancer," he said.

I ignored him. "I can run you a bath, Alfie. And tomorrow –…"

"The doctor said it was gas – in France, y'know – I were breathin' it in and I didn't even know what it were doin' to me – thought only bullets and knives and bombs could 'urt me. 'ow can I be 'urt by what I couldn't even fuckin' see?"

"Ireland," I whispered, for all my strength was spent on holding him up when he tried to fall. I was staring ahead, not looking at him, because I could not look at him. Look behind him, I thought, like Franny had looked behind me. "We'll take a trip to Ireland. All my kin are there, they would know what to do."

"I want to meet our child. I want to know 'im – or 'er," he said. "I want to know what they look like – want to 'ear them call me their Dad and know me –…"

"Cyril hasn't eaten yet," I blurted out. I wanted to stand, and I wanted to be out of that room which closed around us. "He must be hungry."

"Willa," he called; once again softly, once again full of tenderness. "Willa, love, look at me, now."

I tried not to – I looked at the purplish stain beneath his eyes instead, saw a patch by his temple that frightened me so much when before I had only thought it was just scaly from some other condition – something benign and easily-treated. Because it was our turn, now.

"It's our turn," I said aloud. "We waited. Two years – more than that. Since before the war, we waited. And that's not – we're supposed to be happy now. We waited –…"

Somewhere between my gasping sobs, it had become a scream. I had stood up, too.

"You're too young for this! You aren't even forty, you aren't even – We only got married a few years ago, we haven't even – we haven't even had our chance yet, Alfie, we haven't –…"

And it all hit me, then. There could be no colour without him; never a blue door with mosaic windows alongside it.

"I just wanted to make it special for you, when I told you," I croaked absently. "You hate surprises."

"So, do you," he said. "Maybe this is why, eh?"

I could not laugh with him, though his had been forced out only to try and console me – to make it seem like he was stronger than he really felt, inside. But I knew him. God, how I had always known him.

I heard Ada, in my head, when she spoke about her husband who had died, how for their son, his father's life had only ever been made of photographs and old letters and second-hand memories. She said, I sat in my bedroom and starved myself because I thought death was a better thing than to be without him.

I had not known a good life before I had met him; a proper life, one worth every struggle and strain and bullet wound. We had fought to be here. It was our turn.

"It looked like gold, out there," he mumbled distantly. "Didn't know what we was breathin' in, what was touchin' our skin. We know now, though, don' we? We know now. Manifestin' itself, like all the bad things I ever done. But that's just 'ow it goes, innit?"

I felt my eyes roll before I fell.

I felt the pain of knowing.

vii

In the cocoon of our bedroom, I could hear them murmur in the front-room below. I heard Ollie, his tone edged in a sharp panic. I heard Franny, emotional, but soft and comforting all the same. He did not speak much at all. Perhaps he suffered the same distraught, unending exhaustion that I did. I was limp against our bed, a hand placed over my stomach. The box had been forgotten, somewhere.

I had only wanted to make it special for him, and some part of me wished that he had lied for just a little while longer – and how selfish was that?

It was pitiful and I understood why I had always thought there was a blackness in me that had come from Esther. It had made me selfish - but I still wished that he had lied, so that there could have been a little more happiness. That we could have had what we always wanted. If only for a little while.

I slid from those blankets like some sluggish creature stirred from a deep, unforgiving slumber, not quite fully woken. I could not even properly open my eyelids, so swollen from tears that they drooped in their heaviness. I felt my kneecaps smack against the bare floorboards, felt my fingers lace together again.

I had my second conversation with God that night.

In it, I asked for all those things that had been asked before. I wanted our baby and I wanted that house that we had dreamt about all these years and I wanted Alfie. No war and no pain for our child, no hatred for their mixed heritage, never any sorrow at all, because our turn had come around, and it was only fair, now.

I asked for all that, in between the scattered words like blessed and eternal gratitude and what I had heard sprinkled throughout my life in which religion had only ever been an after-thought. I asked that Alfie be made better, that all his blackness be taken out.

Hold it off, I said, and when I have this baby, give it to me instead, because he has been through enough fighting in this life. I can take this fight for him. He has had enough of war.

I asked that our baby be born healthy, too. I wanted this baby to grow and flourish and be loved. I wanted them to know a happy, warm, passionate life; I only asked that Alfie be there to see it, too.