She called out my name a couple of times. Her voice was plaintive. I was in the bathroom, door bolted, and didn’t answer. Soon she went away. I didn’t want to fight with her, but I just couldn’t find it inside myself, a kind word, a peace offering of any sort, even as I forced myself to think that it was the last chance I would ever have. Later, when I found out she’d eaten all the bread from the bread bin, a whole loaf that I had bought and paid for because she spent most of her giro on cans, I would be glad.

I ran a bath and slipped into the water. It was lukewarm and three inches deep. I got a washcloth and ran it over myself, climbed out and fought my hair back into a plait while looking in the bit of mirror we kept propped against the window, and in which I saw only pieces of myself, rubber lips, small chin, round grayish eyes. In the pane I could see a second reflection, whole, colorless, a mere outline superimposed over the field. In the twilight the barley was fawn and swaying where the breeze touched it. I waited there, watching, and it seemed that they were playing, the barley bowing to the breeze, the breeze gusting then abating. When it was gone, the barley seemed to wait, to tremble for it. It was like watching lovers.

When I left, the TV was off, but she had the radio on. Nights, if she was home, she liked to listen to the local show where people called up to talk about what was on their minds, in the middle of the night phoning in to get things off their chests about crop circles and ley lines, car clamping and the Criminal Justice Bill. My mother listened from the sofa, or paced the room. I sometimes imagined she was waiting to hear someone in particular, or for one of the speakers to say something, magic words perhaps, that would release her from her spell. Now I wonder if it wasn’t simply that she had gone beyond music, that listening to it confused and disquieted her, like someone hearing a language they had once understood well, but which was now lost to them.

I took the Ridgeway back to the manor, jogged the three miles there swinging my arms. The track led across the Downs, a pale chalk road. I heard rabbits bolting in the darkness, pebbles skittering under my feet. I put home out of my mind and it was easy, like switching off a light. Midway, the track went through a copse where it was lightless, where the night was thicker, and my body shied like a blinkered horse as though sensing something my eyes couldn’t see.