A beanbag round is a shotgun cartridge that, instead of exploding with skin-tearing pellets, contains them in a small fabric pillow. These are often used by riot police and are designed to immobilise rather than kill. Technically they are classed as ‘less lethal’ rather than ‘non-lethal’; they can, for example, break a rib and drive it into the heart, but the most common cause of death from a beanbag gun is, of all things, accidentally loading it with real ammunition.

Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those books where I describe the velocity in metres per second of every bullet fired, the make and model and factory of commission of the gun in question, and the relative humidity or wind conditions that may affect trajectory. I have a point to make.

The point is, while Little League would still have been plenty scared to have the gun pointed at him, and my mother obliged him with four broken ribs, she didn’t kill him.

It has occurred to me that my mother can’t have known the gun she was holding was ‘less lethal’ when she made the choice to pull the trigger, but that’s for a different time. The point is, my mother’s scar is above her right eye, and the bank-heist hopeful had only given her a broken nose. The point is, once the police and the paramedics had cleared the building and stuffed cotton buds in my mother’s nostrils, it was mid-afternoon by the time someone finally put the phone back on the hook, where it started ringing immediately. The point is, I remember the temperature of the day: it was baking hot. The point is, the call was from my school, to let my mother know that none of the three Cunningham boys had arrived that morning. The point is, my mother had been, ahead of her usually very tight schedule, five minutes early to work.

The point is, my mother shot someone but didn’t kill them.

The point is, there is a death.

The stupor. The sleepwalking. The distracted errors.

Three boys in a rooftop car park on a scorching summer day, forgotten to be dropped off at school, still clicked into their seats. I don’t remember the window breaking, the blood pouring off Audrey’s forehead as she sliced it on the glass, deep enough to scar. The first thing I know as concrete is the hospital; I was told about the rest later. To this day I wake from nightmares, choking. But, to be honest, I don’t really remember the day at all. I have huge black patches.

All I know is that when Jeremy died, I was sitting next to him.

From: <REDACTED>

To: [email protected]

Subject: Photos for EIMFHKS

Hi Ernest,