“Poor Bettina,” said my mother. “Come here.” She reached up and embraced me briefly; her skin was soft over the vine-firm tendons of her thin arms. A tightness I hadn’t noticed in my back eased. There was, after all, nothing to worry about.

“Perhaps we should send that shock back where it belongs,” said my mother.

She had ways—terribly polite, peaceful ways—of putting our world to rights. That night she called Sergeant Aberdeen, our policeman. I listened calmly, suppressing a juvenile glee. She thought he should know young Gary Damson was stirring up trouble; of course she could trust him to do what was necessary, couldn’t she? He had a daughter, so he understood, after all?

We did not care for poor Winston’s daughter, and so, “Did he understand?” I asked, when she hung up. My mother merely sighed. Patricia Aberdeen, after all, would have revenged herself upon Gary without recourse to the proper authorities.

“A shame he was saddled with raising such a wild girl,” said my mother. “It was fortunate for everyone when she was sent away. Better not to think about her, don’t you agree?”

So I did not. But when I changed for bed and emptied my pockets, I found the letter again.

It wasn’t a real envelope. The paper was locked together by an untidy series of creases. With it a memory unfurled just as mechanically and rumpled: my hands knew this pattern, we had folded notes like this at school. We? I had been peculiarly friendless; it wasn’t nice to have favourites, besides which the company at Runagate State School had been lacking. Not like us. Like Gary Damson, too much themselves: nothing but sunburn, muscle and dirt. Like my brothers.

A sudden image of the three of them, crow-hoarse with laughter, Mitch and Chris lanky as cranes beside Gary.

Dismissing that train of thought as unprofitable, I opened the letter over my bare knees, the brittle butcher paper scraping faintly on faded scars.

It contained a page torn from the Runagate, Woodwild and Crossing STAR. The date was three years old, but I guessed each word before I read it.

YOUTHS RUN AMOK

DAMAGE AND DISTURBANCE

DESTRUCTION OF PEACE

I shifted the scrap to read the writing underneath: a large, unsteady scrawl, the pen pressing veins into the paper.

YOU COWARD, TINK

Why would anyone trouble to point that out twice in one day? Gary Damson’s words, although he wouldn’t have called me Tink. Only my brothers and father had called me that. But they were long gone. When I tried to remember how their voices sounded when they said it, I couldn’t. I wasn’t surprised: even their faces were blurry. My mother hadn’t kept any photographs. We don’t need to be reminded, do we, Bettina? Forgetting is easy, once you learn how.