– Come here, come on! It’s not real, Esme, it’s just your imagination. It happens to boys down the pit all the time. Just ignore it! There’s nobody trapped in this building but us and that’s just cos we’re poor, Esme. Do you know what Granny used to call me? A Brollachan, a brilliant shapeless creature of the night, and I used to think of that down the mine. I’d hear a cockerel crow down there! Once I heard kids playing hopscotch fifty feet below the ground! You feel something in this building like I used to do in the mine.

– I’m not a Brollachan, though!

– No, yer not.

– I’m a wee girl and I see things that you won’t ivvir see at all and when I say so ye think it’s a lie!

– I don’t, darlin, I promise. I don’t think it’s a lie!

She sniffs.

Ivor lets her climb up on him.

Esme is like a wee monkey, she is. She clings on and he hushes and rocks her until she falls asleep and his big sister is comatose beside him and the deathwatch beetles are tapping like crazy all through the limbs of the building now.

It is the illest of omens.

1999

Flat 9F9

Dot (27) the death of all the secrets