treeless concrete squares. She knew by name the twelve-year-olds who rose out of dark corners to sell bags of powder. She knew the wandering encrusted toddlers, the coddled pitbull terriers, the girls who smoked and shrieked beneath her window, and the boys who careered past in stolen cars refining their handbrake turns. She was on first-name terms with the women who kept their flats spotless and swore at their children, who were brought up in the old-fashioned way. They were free to play outside all day, given duties from an early age and retained respect for their parents. Many of them had aunts, uncles and grandparents living nearby.
Mary let herself into the dark hall, stubbed her toe on a piece of motorbike engine and then bumped into a clothes-horse draped with washing and positioned just inside the living-room door. In the bedroom, she took off her clothes and put on a t-shirt that Tobias had left on top of the laundry bin. She lay down and reached out, her hand meeting first his cropped hair, then the coarse stubble on his cheek and then, beside him, the heat and force of their two-year-old daughter, Bella George Clough.
Mary propped herself up and put her lips against Bella’s head to kiss her, catching the odd smell of biscuit and vinegar that collected in the child’s clammy hair. Bella began to wake, her mouth opening and closing with a sticky smack. Her free arm waved and her legs kicked out as if the world had all at once let go of her. Her fists clenched and her first sleepy agitations hardened into a wail, and Mary wondered as she often did if Bella sometimes forgot having been born and was furious to find herself here.
Tobias began to sit up. Mary lifted Bella onto her chest and pushed him back down. He smiled, mumbling Hello, Good night and How did it go, trying to find her to kiss her. Mary kept her hand on his shoulder, saying ‘Goodnight, fine, sleep now,’ as he subsided back under the quilt. He was working as a despatch rider and had to set off at seven-thirty. Mary settled herself back against the pillows, feeling the child’s fist knock against her ribs as she sang to her:
Somewhere over dawn’s early light,
it begins, the holding hands,
haunting me to tell,
a long long while outside.
Soon Bella was sleeping again and Mary continued to sit, one hand caught in Tobias’s sleeve and the other pressed against the solid back of her daughter. She started to drift off but even this sketchy darkness brought the rushing feeling back, and as her eyes closed her hand shot up and she shouted ‘Stop!’
Tobias turned towards her.
‘Sorry, did I wake you?’ Mary asked, putting her hand on his shoulder. Stop.
He opened his eyes. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘I don’t know why I said it, I’m sorry.’
‘Said what?’
‘Stop. I shouted “Stop”.’
‘It was just a dream. You didn’t shout anything. I would’ve heard you.’
Even if the post had not been lying on his camp bed, Jacob would have known that it was Barbara who had broken in. He would say nothing to her. The spilled papers and books were worthless to him now. He would leave them where she had dropped them until the day he gave up the room, and began now by walking over them to collect a notepad, a bottle of whiskey and a packet of Egyptian cigarettes. He wrapped the Mexican blanket from his bed around his shoulders and sat on the step where he smoked and drank, the calm this brought balanced by the stimulus of the cold air. He made notes in writing he would not be able to read, looking up now and then to watch the light enlarging above the river.
Jacob had the air of someone halfway through a door. People thought of him as averted and non-committal and, being Jacob, he enjoyed such misunderstandings. He wondered at the evening, and admired his own insistence. This girl who looked like a boy was still young enough for her gaucheness to be endearing. She had begun to know things about which he knew more. She was more susceptible than she realised and she was in pain, he could see that. She was going away. Jacob knew exactly why Juliet interested him and this did nothing to alter his belief that he was in love.
Juliet sat up in bed. ‘Endearingly emphatic! Endearing! Christ. And emphatic. Emphatic! Fuck, fuck. Endearingly emphatic! Fuck …’
Once Juliet decided that she ought to see a doctor, she began to organise her illness. She made a list. How long had she been having pain? She could not remember when it began, nor could she imagine being free of it, and because it had once been tolerable, she had assumed it still was. It had not occurred to her to worry about the fact that she had to sit down and lift her feet into the air to put on her shoes, or that sometimes she could not breathe well or find words. These things were simply there to be negotiated.
The doctor was a shockingly handsome man of about her age and she was so determined not to be embarrassed, she was a doctor’s daughter after all, that when he asked her to undress, she stood up immediately and pulled off her skirt. ‘No!’ cried the doctor. ‘I’ll just fetch a … someone … Please! Go behind the screen and remove your clothes, just your lower half, and lie down. And cover yourself, please, with the blanket.’
He returned with a nurse, who stood by Juliet’s head while the handsome young man asked her to raise her knees and then touched her thigh, meaning to move her leg to one side, only he did so too slowly, too gently, and Juliet blushed and turned her face towards the wall. She felt a chill blob of lubricating jelly and then the doctor started to issue warnings – that this might feel cold or sharp or uncomfortable – and Juliet felt pressure as the speculum was inserted and then opened with that scraping noise that was only the turn of a screw, but which nonetheless frightened her more than the pain caused by his fingers probing parts of her that felt too deep to belong. She had tears running down her face but the only sounds she made were when the doctor asked if this hurt, or this, or this. He was picking over the pieces of glass and stone she had come to imagine were inside her, and he knew exactly where to find them.
Eventually, the doctor peeled off his gloves, washed his hands, went back to his desk and began to type with unexpected efficiency as the nurse handed Juliet some tissue, with which she wiped her eyes. The nurse handed her some more. The doctor typed for a long time.
He asked more questions and Juliet told him in explicit detail about the colour and texture and quantity of the blood, and also about the pain: ‘Sometimes it makes me throw up; other times I shit brown water.’
He rubbed his hands together, realised what he was doing and stopped. ‘I’m going to refer you.’
‘What will they do?’
‘Probably a scan and then, if need be, they’ll take you in and have a look round.’
‘Look round for what?’
‘Anything a scan might not pick up. They’ll probably go in through the belly button so you won’t have to worry about a scar.’
‘When will this be done?’
‘The current waiting time is five to six months.’
‘But I’m going away.’
‘You’re,
