We had met Joe at the pub. My mother and her mini-me, perching on the climbing frame that was for the under tens, bickering for shandy, slipping inside to down the last two inches of any pint that had a back turned on it. Out on the climbing frame in the dark with someone’s fags and a lighter. A figure at the back door, a man watching and then later his arm around my mother. I lounged in the back of the car as he drove us home. Smirking when he told me to put the seat belt on. Looking up to see his eyes in the rearview mirror. At the house, my mother had turned and invited him in.

“That all right with you, young lady?”

And I had said that it was.

The world only really has one story for that girl. That’s one of the reasons why you don’t tell, don’t report. Because among other concerns, it means being that girl. I won’t be her for you. I can’t even be her for myself. Beyond the walls I have erected, I sometimes hear her weeping. Sometimes I do not think it is her, I think it is my mother. I hear the weeping woman behind the wall. Sometimes it is the music I live by.

“Are you all right? Can I help at all?” I looked up. The vicar, of course. A kindly face, but vicars, I wanted to tell him, shouldn’t have beards. Vicars should have nude pink faces. Once, on a Saturday afternoon walk, we had come across rutting donkeys in a field, Peter’s mother had said, “Well really, Richard,” in a disappointed way, and on the way back to the car I had noticed that the vicar, while pretending to stare into a field, was silently weeping with laughter. A vicar should, after taking you to a football match—and God only knew why because none of you liked football—and after listening to the crowd jeering insults and making monkey noises at a visiting black player, say in a tight voice in the silence on the way home, “Those were the men who crucified Christ.” A vicar should be quite shy and get himself into such a state before giving a sermon, your son and his friend were forbidden on pain of death from occupying the bathroom on a Sunday morning

“I am all right,” I told him. I sailed to my feet. The vicar was sorry. He hadn’t meant to disturb me. I was welcome to stay. “It was a very long time ago,” I told him, making for the doors.