Although I hadn’t seen Mary since that time, I certainly could have done. In fact I could have seen her at least five times, because that’s how often she’d come to put on shows in Veeklehouse while I’d been living at Michael’s Place. Each time she came I heard people talking about her a little more excitedly than the last, as Mary became one of the best-loved and best-known shadowspeakers in all of the Davidfolk Ground. ‘Some of them just keep on about their presents,’ people would say about her, ‘so you end up wondering if presents are all that really interests them. But that Mary never even mentions them. Not once. She takes whatever we have to give, of course – well, she’s got to live – but you get the feeling she’d put on her shows anyway if we gave her nothing at all.’ I felt kind of proud of Mary when I heard people speak of her like that, but I still kept away, afraid of what it might stir up inside me if I saw her again.

I was still angry angry with her for the way she treated me in Circle Valley, turning her back on me after all that time, not even giving me a chance to speak, not even thinking about how lonely and desperate I might feel to be left there alone, so far away from anyone I knew. ‘Listen to me, Mary!’ I wanted to yell at her whenever I thought about it. ‘Just bloody listen to me for ten heartbeats! You got it wrong. You got it all wrong. I don’t think I’m better than you. Of course not. How could you be so dumb? I look up to you! Surely that’s obvious! I wasn’t trying to say I knew better than you, I was just asking for a bit of the help you happily gave, waking after waking, to everyone who came to your shows.’