The empty house dragged me down like wet clothes. Once, it had shaken daily with voices and running feet. Dreadfully untidy. I looked at the old scars on my hands, my knees. Almost vanished, scattered faint as fireworks, as gravel …

You coward … Gary must know something. I was calmer. Perhaps if I asked him again, nicely.

At the telephone table, I paged through the slim directory, seeking the Damsons. What were Gary’s parents’ names? They caught at the edge of memory, then came free: Brian and Marilyn. Between V Damson (only an address in Woodwild, no phone) and KL Danville (the auctioneer), a heavy black line had been ruled neatly through the name, address and number of B & M Damson. I flipped the book around, but the advertisement for Damson Fencing wasn’t there, either.

I couldn’t call the directory—my mother might hear me ask for the Damsons’ number—and I could hardly borrow a phone book from Mr Alleman.

I chewed my thumbnail, then opened the drawer and took out my mother’s address book. The Damsons weren’t there, of course, but I was sure Sergeant Aberdeen, who had the only unlisted number, had been. There were no names at all under A, but no sign of anything having been erased. I flipped back through and found him under W, for Winston, smoothed the book open, stared at the phone’s dial, took a deep breath and lifted the handset.

I did not breathe while the phone rang. My heart thundered. Don’t answer, I willed down the line. Don’t. It rang and rang. I was about to hang up, relieved, when I heard a click.

“Yep?” said a young woman. She sounded as if she were chewing gum. Unsanitary and unattractive.

“Hello?” I said, deciding, with difficulty, against introducing myself until I knew to whom I was speaking. It felt excitingly clandestine. “May I please speak with Patricia Aberdeen?”

“This is Trish,” she answered.

I clutched the receiver with both hands and said, “Hello, Patricia. This is Bettina Scott speaking.”

I thought the line had dropped. Then Patricia Aberdeen swore.

AND WHAT LIVES IN THEM

“There aren’t any stories except the ones we bring with us,” Trish Aberdeen used to say, stamping into the long grass after school, as if she wanted it to be true (as if she didn’t keep thinking she’d seen wolves and tigers stalking her in the scrub). Gary Damson, who knew better, who suspected Trish knew better too, would hold his tongue.

Because even if she were right, something had to happen to all the stories no one wanted. Histories and memories that had been taken into the trees, beyond the fences and roads—those seams of the world from which reason and civilisation leak—and abandoned.