Her thumb moved on the sheet, stroking, a tiny tender movement. “Emma went, ‘But it’s definitely not there?’ and I went, ‘Definitely definitely. It’s just a bit of silliness, and so we’re not going to talk about it, ever. OK?’

“Emma looked a lot happier. She snuggled down in her bed and went, ‘OK. Shhh.’ And she put her finger up to her mouth and smiled at me, over it—”

Jenny caught her breath, and her head whipped back. Her eyes were wild, ricocheting. I said, quickly, “And she didn’t mention it again?”

She didn’t hear me. “I was just trying to keep the kids OK. That was all I could do. Just keep the house clean, keep the kids safe, and keep getting up in the morning. Some days I didn’t think I was going to manage even that. I knew Pat wasn’t going to get better—nothing was going to get better. He’d stopped even applying for jobs, and anyway who’d hire him, in the state he was in? And we needed money, but even if I could’ve got work, how could I leave the kids with him?”

I tried to make some kind of soothing noise; I don’t know what came out. Jenny didn’t stop. “You know what it was like? It was like being in a blizzard. You can’t see what’s right in front of your face, you can’t hear anything except this white-noise roar that never lets up, you don’t have a clue where you are or where you’re heading, and it keeps just coming at you from every direction, just coming and coming and coming. All you can do is keep on taking the next step—not because it’ll actually get you anywhere, just so that you don’t lie down and die. That was what it was like.”

Her voice was ripe and swollen with remembered nightmare, like some dark rotten thing ready to burst. I said—for her sake or my own, I didn’t know and didn’t care—“Let’s move forward. This was August?”

I was just thin meaningless sounds, yammering at the rim of that blizzard. “I was having dizzy fits—I’d be going up the stairs and all of a sudden my head would be spinning; I’d have to sit down on the step and put my head on my knees till it went away. And I started forgetting stuff, stuff that had just happened. Like I’d say to the kids, ‘Get your coats on, we’re going to the shop,’ and Emma would give me this weird look and say, ‘But we went this morning,’ and I’d look in the cupboards and yeah, everything I thought we needed would be right there, but I still couldn’t remember anything—putting it there, or buying it, or even going out. Or I’d go to take a shower, and when I was taking off my top I’d realize my hair was wet: I’d just had a shower, like it had to be less than an hour ago, but I couldn’t remember it. I would’ve thought I was losing it, except I didn’t have room to worry about that. I couldn’t keep hold of anything except the second that was actually happening.”