You don’t have any money for a ticket, Mr Huff! Miss Hahn chuckled. You returned the stupid envelope, remember?

Yes. Yes. The airport. If those idiotic executors of Kimberly’s estate would just … just pull their damn fingers out and make that deposit into my bank account so that I could … So that I could just … just jump on to the next available flight and … and leave. Run off. Cut all connections. Move on. Never know for sure that she was … that she might not … Eliminate all certainty and thereby eliminate any need to … to suffer … to mourn … to …

IS SHE REALLY DEAD?!

Make a ridiculous amount of fuss! Miss Hahn chastised.

‘Sorry?’ Miss Drury was confused.

‘To lose the two of them in a single week?!’ I garbled. ‘It makes no sense! I mean statistically. It makes no sense at all!’

IS SHE REALLY DEAD?!

Do you understand statistics, Mr Huff? Miss Hahn wondered. Because I always thought strange improbabilities were pretty much par for the course …

Oh why oh why did I burn those stupid photographs? I pushed my nose into the Woolworth’s bag and slowly ground my teeth.

That’s quite the most horrible habit, Mr Huff! Miss Hahn clucked reprovingly.

IS SHE? REALLY? REALLY DEAD?!

Was it … was this all my fault? Did I do this? By spitefully trying to eliminate her ‘truth’ from the narrative …?

The truth is the truth, Mr Huff! Miss Hahn snapped. It can’t be falsified. It’s like a … her voice softened slightly, a shining light. An eternal verity. The truth is … well it’s … it’s God, I suppose. If you choose to believe in such ephemera.

No. No! Stop self-dramatizing, Franklin! I agonized. So you burned a couple of photographs? Big deal! You’ve still got the negatives back in Canada, haven’t you? They’re yours now, you idiot!

‘She once told me that the first time she ever met Orla, Orla took a hold of her hand, looked deep into her eyes and whispered …’

‘Orla!’ I all but choked on the name, then smacked my forehead, repeatedly, into the Woolworth’s bag.

Not sodding Orla again!

CARLA HAHN IS DEAD! SHE’S DEAD! SHE’S DEAD!

‘… “There’s a bruise,”’ Miss Drury persisted. ‘She said, “I see a terrible bruise – a bleeding – hidden, deep under the skin, held in, which has spread throughout the whole of your life. It started in Germany. It started with your mother and it has continued to throb and to sting and to darken and to consume your whole family …”’

‘An eleven-year-old girl said that?!’ I snorted.

DEAD!

Out of the mouths of babes! Miss Hahn sighed.

‘Yes.’ Miss Drury nodded. ‘But then Orla understood Carla, instinctively. “I understand how you feel,” she said, “right here, in my heart. Because my family is marked by exactly the same stain.”’

DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!

‘Pardon?’

I lifted my head, mystified.

Oh, do try and keep up, Mr Huff! Miss Hahn grumbled.