I couldn’t imagine then why she lied, but later on I understood that if Silver knew Jonny had hit her she was afraid he’d turn them both out. She’d be obliged to go back to Jonny’s room and be alone with him. Forever, was how she saw it. She’d lose the money and the airfare and become Jonny’s slave. There would be no choice about it, for she was still afraid to go out in the street. She got up onto all fours, then to her feet and spat something out into her cupped hand. It was a tooth, a molar, that Jonny had knocked out with his fist.

“Liv,” I said, “you’ll have to go to a dentist. You’ll have to go out now and go to a dentist.”

She mumbled something about it being too late for that and what could a dentist do? “It is at the back. It will not show.”

There’s women for you. The prime concern is always for the look of the thing, for appearance. What will he think? What will other women think? I resolved in that moment, while I was fetching her a glass of water and a handful of tissues, that I wouldn’t be one of that sisterhood and I have more or less stuck to it. If I lose a tooth, it’s my health and ability to chew I think about, not the beauty I’ve never had much of anyway. Still, Mrs. Clarkson has a lovely set of grinders now, by the look of them the whole lot capped, and wears the molar around her neck. I wonder what reason she gave the orthodontist for losing it?

Morna came back while I was giving Liv the water. I wiped her face and offered to take the tooth away and dispose of it. She wouldn’t have that, she wanted to keep it, perhaps just because it was part of her. Morna said innocently, “Did your tooth just drop out?”

Most of us lead such violence-free lives, all the violence we ever see is on television or in the cinema, that we’re loath to believe people do kick and punch and hit other people, not at least the ones we know. Healthy young people’s teeth don’t just fall out, but Morna would rather have believed Liv’s had than that Jonny had knocked it out. Liv nodded.

“Jonny is out on the roofs. He looks for the money.” Her laughter set her mouth bleeding again. “He is putting his hand down chimney pots, I expect, and lifting the lids off—what do you call them?—water tanks.”

“He won’t find it,” I said.

She put her hands on my arms, she looked into my face. “He must not, Clo, you are not letting him find it.”