when did any of that nonsense do any good? She’s tapped. I’ll have her taken away, I will.’
‘Hush. You’ll do no such thing. You’re frightening the child. If you let her play out rather than keeping her cooped up, she wouldn’t need to make up stories.’
‘Who cares about her? What about my nerves?’
Nana ignores her and returns her attention to me. ‘You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Edie love?’
‘Yes?’ I say uncertainly.
‘So you haven’t really been to the fireworks, have you?’
Ma glares over Nana’s shoulder, eyes threatening dire punishment. I am afraid of lying, terrified of the truth. My heart gallops like a stampede of coal horses.
‘No,’ I squeak.
Ma smirks; Nana does not. I have satisfied one and not the other. I have no idea how to please them both.
‘Was it a nightmare, Edie?’ Nana purrs.
I can tell the truth, if that’s what she wants. But I no longer know what anyone wants. ‘Yes,’ I lie.
‘Well, then,’ she says. ‘You were dreaming. That’s all.’
Ma storms out of the room, grumbling about my disobedience. Nana pauses, screws up her eyes until they are slits. I have the oddest notion she’s trying to see through me and find Gnome. She leans close.
‘Herbert?’ she whispers.
‘Shh,’ I hiss. ‘He hates that name.’ She gives me a startled glance. ‘I’m sorry, Nana. I didn’t mean to be rude. But he likes to be called Gnome.’
She looks over her shoulder, as though worried Ma is watching. I did not think grandmothers were afraid of their own children.
‘Quiet now,’ she murmurs. She kisses my brow. ‘Let’s have no more of this talk. Not in front of your mother. You can see how it riles her.’
‘But he’s my brother.’
‘No, he’s not.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘I can’t explain. You’re too little. One day. Just don’t say his name again. A quiet life. That’s what we all want.’
‘Can we run away, Nana?’
‘Hush, my pet. Do you want your ma to come back in here?’
She pinches my cheek. It is affectionate, but her eyes are desperate. She slides away, taking the light of the candle with her. I lie in a darkness greater than the absence of flame. I’m afraid. If Nana is too, there’s nowhere I can turn. Through the wall I hear them argue, voices muffled by brick.
‘This wasn’t supposed to happen,’ wails Ma. ‘She’s ruined everything.’
‘She’s ruined nothing. She’s the same as you and me, that’s all.’
‘That’s all? I raised her to be normal.’
‘Cissy, for goodness’ sake …’
‘It can’t be true. I won’t let it be.’
‘You can’t alter facts. We are what we are,’ says Nana, over and over. ‘We are what we are.’
I smell home in all its familiarity: a stew of spilt beer, pipe smoke and damp sawdust. And something else: my hair, reeking of gunpowder. I crawl out of bed. Underneath is a pair of britches, ghostly with warmth from the body that wore them. Beside them are my boots, mud clumped under the heel. I press my finger to it: fresh, damp. Ma says I was lying. Nana says I was dreaming. If I didn’t go out, I must be imagining this as well.
I tiptoe to the window. I can’t be sure if I opened it or not. I peer through the glass. I would never be brave enough to climb down the drainpipe, not in a hundred years. My thoughts stumble, stop in their tracks.
‘Where are you, Gnome?’ I sob. ‘I need you.’
However many times Ma’s told me off, I’ve always been able to find his hand in the dark and hang on. He’s always been there. But tonight, there’s no answer. Something emptier than silence.
I try to make sense of the senseless. Ma says Gnome is all in my head – a nightmare. Nana says he isn’t my brother, that he is imaginary. They would not lie to me. Grown-ups are always right. I am the one who is wrong. I am a naughty girl. I tell lies. I make things up.
I must have been asleep. I must have dreamed the whole thing. I will be a good girl. I will scrape his name from the slate of my memory. If I say what Ma wants then it will be the truth and she will be happy. She won’t be cross any more.
I double over in agony, as though I have been split in half and my heart torn out. I squeeze my nightdress, expecting to find it soaked with blood. All is dry. In the faint light I examine my chest, searching for wounds. My skin is whole, undamaged. I am just a girl, on my own.
I throw the marbles out of the window; hear them click as they roll down the privy roof, and the fainter thud as they fall into the dirt. There is no such thing as luck.
‘Gnome?’ I say his name for the last time.
The sound echoes off the ceiling. I have lost him. I do not know how to get him back. If he was ever here. For the first time in my life, I am alone.
Stroll through Hulme of an evening and you will be forgiven for imagining it a den of drunkards. Brave the labyrinth of streets, row upon row of brick-built dwellings black as burned toast, and there, upon each and every corner, you will find it: haven for the weary traveller, fountain for the thirsty man – the beerhouse.
Hulme boasts a hundred of them; a hundred more besides. There’s the Dolphin, famed for its operatic landlord; the Duke of Brunswick with a ship’s bell clanged at closing time; the Hussar and its sword swiped at Peterloo. If you can ignore their glittering siren song and press on, only then will you find us, breasting the tip of Renshaw Street like a light-ship.
The Comet.
Sparkling Ales is etched upon one frosted window, Fine Stouts and Porter upon the other. A board stretches the width of our wall, announcing Empress Mild and Bitter Beer. Above the door and brightest of all, the gilt scroll of my mother’s name: Cecily Margaret Latchford,
