I try to reach out, catch it, but the light change, is no longer a wall of light. Now it is shafts of light squeezing through wooden boards. Boards in a wall, in a hut, that don’t seem to fit together. And I can see the roof, the shafts of light curving cross the shadowy afternoon.

Is no longer a dream. Is a memory of me as a young pickney lying on a straw mat covered in rags, fingers and toes grasping, reaching for the light shafts surrounding me.

Now there is a face. The face of a woman. A woman I know, a woman I remember. Stella!

How long since I call to mind that name? Remember the hands that used to pick me up, bathe me in the softness of leaf-shadowed morning light.

So many seasons come, gone and come again, yet still I find it hard to let meself remember Stella without the pain. A pain that been driving me from behind a line of hidden, buried memories.

Maybe now is time to let them loose. Dig them up. Pull them cross the line. Drag them memories into the colour of life and relive the last time I held her. Then let meself depart, go me own way. Leave Stella and the thorn of pain behind.

The night before the hanging, backra let me sit with Stella in a stone room with a gate of iron. A small cell with only straw for bedding. The guard shoved food through the bars. She didn’t want none. I expected to see her crying, knowing what the morning going bring. But all she worrying bout was her clothes. How she going look. She still had on the same dress she wore at the trial and it is dirty, all torn up. She used the water I bring to tidy up herself, before she pulled me down to sit beside her.

‘The children … dem all right?’

I nodded. Couldn’t say nothing. Couldn’t tell her how much Eliza cried when the warden sent word is only I could come visit.

‘Me provision ground?’

‘Give it water every day.’

‘The house? Dem good-for-nuttin’ girls, they clean it good?’

I nodded.

‘The washing? Must be piling up bad. Must be a big load. A big big load …’

‘Eliza in charge of the washing now. She turn into a real little slave driver. Order everybody bout. Wonder where she get it from.’

At least this made Stella smile. Even if was a sad little smile.

‘Melon send this for you.’ I pulled a corn fritter out me pocket. Stella grabbed it. Eat every last crumb. Then we sat saying nothing.

Until finally, all quiet like I asked her.

‘How come, Stella? How come?’

Stella stiffened, sat still, said nothing.

‘You must tell me what happened.’

Stella looked at me. Looked at me a long time before she started to speak.