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Such a small slip of paper to contain such a thing. I knew then what it was, with the surety that only a child can possess. Cannot now say how. I was only eight. But it felt somehow that someone was telling me something I already knew. I remember sitting, in that cupboard surrounded by the smell of my mother, and suddenly the smell felt alien, strange. I pushed myself up from the nest of coats, blankets, the box tight in my hands. Shoved past my sister, still only on ‘sixty-three’, ignored the loud tearless sobs that burst from her.

My mother was in the kitchen. Seems now that she was always there, that my entire childhood – at least that which can be accounted for – revolved around my mother in the kitchen. She looked up when I entered, the start of a smile, then down at the box, the smile vanishing.

‘You shouldn’t—’

‘This was me?’

She stared at me, for long seconds, and I could see her choosing, which way she would go. Then she let loose a long, low sigh, wiped her hands on a teacloth. Turned, wrapped her arms around my shoulders. ‘Yes. That was you.’

‘This lady. The one they say is dead. That was my mother, wasn’t it? My real mother.’

I could see her wince at my choice of words and felt a small sliver of satisfaction. But she pulled me tighter, nonetheless. ‘The people at the hospital, they found you. You were only a very little boy. They took you in and called social services. And social services – they knew we wanted someone to love, so they brought you to us.’

I stood, staring. The kitchen, which I knew so well that it felt like a part of me, now the house of a stranger. And new memories – or rather old memories that I had mistaken for dreams – flooding in. An old man who liked to play the piano. A house with a lot of dogs. A big, big house stuffed with children who seem to be coming out of the walls.

‘Did I live somewhere else?’

She studied me, her face more creased now than it was before. ‘They . . . it takes a while, these kind of things. You went to stay with some other people first. Foster families. They were very nice people who looked after you while . . . while social services sorted everything out.’

‘And then I came to you?’

‘Then you came to us.’

‘And my real mum?’

Again that wince, a small nod, an even smaller sigh. ‘The lady in the newspaper article. We found out, after a while, that she was your mum. She was very young when she had you, and she didn’t have any family, and things were . . . difficult.’ Such an insubstantial word. ‘What we think is, she just didn’t know how to look after you, and one day it just all became too much.’

‘She killed herself?’

A long look, biting her lip. Then, finally, ‘That’s what it looks like. We don’t really know what happened. Just that it was very sad, and she must have been very unhappy and terribly desperate to have done such a thing.’

I stood, in the kitchen, could hear the others laughing, shouting, and wondered what kind of a monster I was that I could make my mother do such a thing.

I sit on the bed. Can hear the voices from downstairs, reaching a crescendo, then descending into shrieks – laughter or tears, I cannot tell. I run my fingers through the papers, look at them like I haven’t looked at them a thousand times before, and wonder if this is all a part of saying goodbye. That when you get to the end you revisit the beginning, so that all may be in order. Then I close the lid, returning the box to its hiding place.

ADEN AND I
stand in the street as if our feet have sunk into the melted tarmac. I shouldn’t have brought him here. I should never have brought him here. What the hell was I thinking? Why didn’t I just go to the damn council meeting, like I was supposed to? I look at Aden looking at Carla Lowe. Carla has pushed herself up from the doorjamb, has raised her hand to her eyes, protecting them from the sun. She is looking at us. Aden’s face is pancake-flat, eyes hidden behind dark glasses, but still I can see it, in the clenching, unclenching of his fingers, the short, sharp breaths that make his chest rise and fall like a stop-motion tide. The guilt. I move, a little step; desperately want to reach out and take his hand, but of course I don’t. So I just stand there, as useful as a unicycle to a goldfish, and watch him suffer.

Carla is staring at us with the open simplicity of a child. Or, rather, she is staring at me. I see her features change, the flood of recognition in the tilt of her head, and know that it’s too late to run now. We’re screwed.

‘You’re Dave, okay? You’re a reporter and you work with me,’ I mutter to Aden, not looking at him, and lift my hand into a wave.

Carla returns the wave tentatively, half-turns and presses the butt of her cigarette against the brickwork on the porch. Her skin is snow-white, blue almost, her arms thinner, her face more sunken than it was before. I wonder if this is the first time she has left the house since the heatwave has hit. She wraps her arms around herself, cradling her waist as if she’s cold, although it is almost thirty degrees, and I put on a smile, like there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be. I try not to look at Aden. He’ll be fine. It’s fine. The names of the officers were never released to the media. I think this like I’m not one of the media, like I am somehow removed from that melee. And yet, in a way, I suppose I am. Because I knew. I never told Lydia, though. Never told anyone their names, or where the reporters with their cameras and their microphones could find them. That’s why they trust me, because they know I’ve got their backs.

Carla is walking towards us now, her flip-flops schlopping against the slowly melting tarmac. My hand drops, brushing Aden’s, his skin cold in spite of the heat, and I feel him start. He reaches out, seems like a reflex, and grips my small hand within his larger one, encasing it, and for a moment I am flung backwards in time, am a child again – my father’s hand holding mine – and the world is smaller, easier. Aden rubs his thumb along the curve of my palm. Seems like it’s an unconscious move, and I look at him, but I’m not convinced that he knows I am there, that the move isn’t merely a form of self-comfort. I should say something. And then a car passes and the spell is broken. Aden looks at me, then down at our hands, and I can see a flush that starts at his neck, racing up his cheeks.

‘Sorry.’ He lets go of my hand.

I nod, my cheeks warm, hand tingling.

Carla looks years older than the last time I saw her, scant days after her eldest son was shot. I didn’t want to go, my God, I really didn’t want to go. Of all the death-walks, this would be the worst, the death that wasn’t a death. I had begged my editor to let Dave do it, had mumbled something about being too close, had received a look in return. If you’re that close, get us a better bloody story. So I had gone to the Lowes’ house, notepad in hand. A bargain to keep the firearms officers – to keep Aden – in the shadows. Steve Lowe had opened the door, had all but pulled me into the house, so desperate was he to spill his story. I had sat on the Lowes’ sofa, the springs so worn that my knees seemed to reach up to my shoulders, my notepad resting on its arms, watching them on a sofa of their own. Carla hadn’t been crying, her eyes perfectly dry, but her skin was grey. I had kept reminding myself that their son wasn’t dead, so that I would curb my tongue, would not accidentally say ‘he was’. Carla had sat about as far as it was possible to sit from her husband, wincing as the words tumbled from him, a relentless swarming cascade, so that it was impossible to separate one from the other. Steve, a lumbering, overwhelming presence, all chopping hands, curling lips; Carla trying to vanish into the upholstery, her fingers clinging to the cushion edge so tight it seemed that she would draw blood.

‘Mrs Lowe. Carla. Hi.’ I squint in the harsh sunlight, smiling brightly, like I’m supposed to be here. Can feel Aden shifting beside me.

She stares at me, and I feel the overwhelming urge to do something – dance or wave my hands – so that she’ll keep looking at me, won’t look at Aden, won’t see that he really doesn’t belong.

‘You’re that reporter.’ Carla states it as a fact.

I can smell the cigarette that she has just extinguished. ‘Charlotte Solomon. I’m terribly sorry to bother you.’

Carla folds her arms across her chest, pulls herself up to her full height. It’s not impressive, five-foot-five at the most. But then she’s still taller than me, so who am I to talk? ‘Yeah, Steve said. He’s been to see you, yeah?’ Carla shakes her head, her ponytail slapping against the nape of her neck. A throaty sigh. ‘You here about my boy?’ She leans against the garden wall.

‘Your husband,’ I smile, but not too much, ‘he told me about the civil suit. I thought I’d pop along, have a quick chat with you.’ I’m thinking on my feet. ‘Your husband was . . . um, keen for me to follow this up.’ The lines seem to have run amok on her face. I realise with a start that we are the same age. Or, rather, that we have lived the same amount of chronological time. She, however, has packed far more life into her thirty years than I have into mine.

Carla studies me, and for a moment I think I am busted. There is something in those eyes, a sharpness that I had forgotten, and I have a fleeting vision of her, in a different life, perhaps one where she didn’t have a baby at fourteen, her hair twisted into a chignon, pale legs sheathed in dark tights, a suit from an expensive store.

‘I don’t know how he thinks we’re going to pay for it. Didn’t happen to mention that, did he? Where we’re going to get the piggin’ money from? No. Good at forgettin’ that kind of thing, is Steve. Did he tell you that no one’s interested? None of the solicitors he’s been to see will touch it.’ Carla shook her head. ‘I don’t friggin’ know.’

‘No,’ I offer lamely. ‘He didn’t mention it.’

Carla lets loose a tching sound, then inclines her head towards the house. ‘You’d better come in.’ She stops then, her gaze shifting from me to Aden. My stomach flips.

‘Oh, this is my colleague. Dave.’ I try to say it casually, so that it will slip through this woman’s bullshit net.

Carla looks at Aden, then back at me, and for a moment I think that we are done, that somehow she has ferreted it out, she knows who he is, and at any minute holy hell is going to rain down on us. I glance across, can hear the sound of running water – her neighbour out watering an optimistic hanging basket, in blatant disregard of the hosepipe ban. He’s holding the hose casually. Watching us. My stomach begins the long, slow climb up to my mouth.

‘Well, come on then.’ Carla turns on her heel, her ponytail flying out in an arc behind her, and I glance at Aden, can see him pale beneath his glasses.

How could I have brought him here? What the hell is wrong with me? I walk, keep my head up, like it’s all fine, all in a day’s work, and I feel a little like crying.

A kid’s bike lies sprawled across the front step, its handlebars shimmering in the sunlight. The grass is high, brushes against my ankles as I walk, looks like it hasn’t been cut in a long time. But then I suppose this family has more important things to worry about. The door is hanging open, the red paint beginning to flake away, leaving a dull brown behind, and we follow as Carla navigates her way around the bike, without breaking stride. A faint breeze has found its way into the dim house, sweeping around our feet, streaking through the hallway, into the narrow living room, darting out of the open window, like it too is desperate to escape. It smells of burnt toast and cigarettes.

‘’scuse the mess. Kids. You know.’

I nod, smile, feel something crunching underfoot and wince, thinking that I have crushed some kind of pet. Glance down. An assault course of Cheerios laces the thin pile carpet. Crunch. Crunch. Aden is close behind me. Not faring much better with the cereal alarm system, apparently.

Carla sweeps a stack of folded laundry from the sofa, the same one I sat on last time, setting it on the dining table, where it leans precariously. ‘Sit.’ It is an order, the kind she is used to giving to kids. ‘You want, like, a squash or something?’

Aden shakes his head, is still wearing his sunglasses. I smile. ‘No. We’re fine, thanks.’

She mumbles something. I catch the words ‘kids’, ‘play’, but I confess that I’m not really paying attention. Because I’m watching Aden, and even though he has his glasses on, I can see his gaze trickle across to a coffee table that is set in the corner of the room, an oasis of calm amongst the toys and the laundry and the cereal. It has been dusted recently, probably this morning, the glass top gleaming, although the cupboard beside it is greying with an accumulation of dust. At its centre, a large framed photograph of a boy, a round face, all acute angles and teenage acne. I try not to stare. Three more photographs ring the larger one, a Stonehenge of memories: Dylan as a baby, as a toddler, at six or seven. His entire life laid out there on one coffee table, climbing from infancy to puberty and then – nothing. It is, in fact, a shrine. I look away.

Carla has sat, is perched on the edge of the opposite sofa, within a hair’s breadth of the coffee table, her son’s memorial. But she doesn’t look at it. In fact there is a lean to her, faint but there, as if it is an invisible forcefield pushing her away. She bites her lip, looks down at her fingernails, studying the yellowing edges. ‘Steve. He can’t . . . He won’t let it go. That’s why he keeps bugging you.’

‘Oh, it’s not . . .’ I begin, lamely.

‘I know he’s bugging you. He can be a pain in the arse. Says we deserve justice. For Dylan.’

‘But you don’t . . .?’ I frame the words, twisting them to check that they fit. ‘The civil suit. It’s not what you want?’

She shrugs. Her eyes are full. ‘What good would it do? It won’t help Dylan. Thing is, it’s different for Steve. Me, I’ve got three other kids.’ She gestures at the toys splayed across the floor. ‘I’m at the hospital every day with Dylan. He was in a residential care home, see, but they said he had a chest infection, that he needed IV antibiotics, so we’re back to the hospital again. Every day.’ Her voice has become murky, dense. ‘I wash him, change him. I cut his hair. I read to him too. He likes to read. He gets that from me.’