Where is she? Where is she? Screams are ripping out of me. Flashes of her throwing her small body against the car. Did I hear something crack? Without her there to protect I don’t care what happens to me. ’Cause see, they call me a menace and if the shoe fits I’ll wear it. Welcome back, my King. Rage rears its head and rushes through me, claiming me. I start to bang my hands against the glass, against the roof, kicking out at the seat in front of me. Hands grab on to me, holding me down.

I can hear Taxi Joe cursing at me. ‘Shut up, you stupid cunt.’ His voice sounds distorted, muffled and strained, as if he’s wearing a muzzle. There’s fear in that voice.

Doc O’D is humming in my ear: Samantha Harvey, what a very fine pickle you’ve got yourself into, and he winks, like we’re in this thing together. The night of the bottle flashes across my mind, the night I crossed some invisible line, a psychic boundary, Doc O’D’s pissed-off face when he saw Luce in the kitchen – hindsight is a muddied thing, especially as so many of my memories are made up of blurry fragments, remnants of my drinking thinking, and who’s to know if what I think happened really happened, or if I imagined it, or if I was lying to myself – always lying to myself?

The car speeds on and I can hear the two men shouting at each other. It’s contagious, this rage, and it has spread its angry red rash. I know that eruption. I used to watch it drain away from Mother and take its place in me instead. I saw the power that it gave her. I feel that same power now.

A laugh, more like a gurgle, flies out of me, caught and stopped in its tracks by the gentleman to my left, who gallantly clamps his hand over my mouth. Seriously? Who’s going to hear me inside this speeding car with the rain drumming down? These two are pretty worked up, going at each other and spitting, globules of the stuff spewing from one mouth to the other, tiny shimmering rainbows.

Granny Mona is stroking my forehead and smoothing the wet hair off my face. ‘Don’t mind your mother, she doesn’t know what end is up, doesn’t know her arse from her elbow.’ And then her face bloats and goes bright red and she’s standing over Mother as a girl, telling her, ‘It’s all your fault, all of it, you’re the reason he left.’ Grandad Stewart was a bolter too. No one could love you enough, Mother. I tried. And now I taste your guilt, your tears, your boozy breath, swollen tongue. I taste your pain.