‘You went home?’

‘The paramedics checked me for hypothermia. I went to the station to give a statement. When I went home my son was there; someone had picked him up. And two policemen stayed overnight, while I lay awake listening for noises. No one knew where Henry had gone.’

‘When did you see Lucky again?’

‘The next day he knocked on the door but I couldn’t talk to anyone. People from the media came to the house. I let the cops come in but that’s all. Yeah, I don’t know when I spoke to Lucky again.’

‘How did you get through the months after the Third of April, emotionally?’

‘It took everything I had to get out of bed. I didn’t know much about depression before. Like, I had all these questions I couldn’t answer. Why couldn’t I deal with it and get on with things? And I mean, I was “the Third of April survivor”, as they say—did I even have a right to feel bad? Eating was hard, and sleeping. I had this pain in my stomach and I kept going back to the doctor saying that I thought I might have been shot that day in the restaurant, when I was still in the kitchen, but no one had ever detected it. I had this fear that there was a bullet lodged in my stomach. And the doctor kept saying it was all in my head. He was a bit of a cunt. He hadn’t seen anyone like this before. But, yeah, something was wrong with my thinking. I began to grind my teeth. Never did that before. By 1997 I had split my upper molars and premolars, busted them like they couldn’t be saved. I ended up needing partial dentures. At the age of thirty-six I needed false teeth, like I was a junkie or something. I used the last of my victims-of-crime compo for dentures.’

‘How are you doing now?’

‘A few months back I lost my job at the district sewage treatment plant. Don’t look at me like that!’

But Emily wasn’t looking at her any particular way.

‘Matter of fact, it was the best job I ever had,’ said Sophia. ‘People think the plant was terrible work.’

2.