Chastened, he looks away. Rests his head on his big brother’s arm.

When both of his passengers are asleep, the driver pulls the slim mobile phone from his pocket, and types a short text message, both eyes on the rain-speckled blackness of the motorway.

We have her. The bidding opens at dawn.

He smiles to himself, as he mentally composes a postscript.

So does she …

TWENTY

8.06 a.m.
Hessle Foreshore

‘You don’t have to come. Fin can take me.’

‘You’ll get filthy.’

‘No I won’t. I’ve got a technique.’

‘It’s the park, you always get dirty …’

‘Mammy, don’t act like that bothers you. I’ve gone to school with a whole slice of pizza in my cardigan pocket before now.’

‘That was your snack for break …’

‘And you tried to colour in Fin’s white sock with a black marker when you couldn’t find any that matched …’

‘Lilah-Rose, you are treating me with no respect …’

‘That’s not true. I respect you, like, totally! I respect you as a free spirit. A Bohemian. An independent woman. I respect you as the kind of Mammy who will let their favourite daughter pop to the swings before school …’

Roisin knew she was beaten before she began. Lilah is relentless. She’s the cleverest person in any room and is also acutely aware of the fact that she’s funny, charming and beautiful. She’s not arrogant, but she does possess the self-assuredness of somebody who knows they are always right. She doesn’t so much argue with people, as outline her case, and wait for them to agree with her, or permit them to continue to be wrong. She’s been going on about the park for half an hour now and Roisin has reached the ‘going through the motions’ stage.

Roisin glances again at the clock on the mantelpiece. It’s not even eight a.m. They don’t have to leave for school for at least half an hour, and that’s only if they decide that today is one of the days when they will endeavour to be vaguely punctual. Roisin feels a bit unwell, truth be told: her bones seem shaky; her stomach is griping. She can’t seem to swallow without it feeling as though there is an obstruction in her chest. Her vision seems hazy, blurred. Were she to allow herself to focus on the memory, she could be back in the van. She could be unconscious, slumped beside the half-brothers; a chemical tang on her tongue and ugly hallucinations behind her eyes. It feels as though twelve years could fall away like snow.

‘Mammy, I have a feral soul. A Traveller’s essence. You are being a barrier to my journey of cultural self-discovery. It’s an act of cruelty to keep me in this cage.’

‘Oh for feck’s sake, Lilah.’

Roisin would love to agree. The children love the park and she loves it when they’re happy. But the air isn’t right. She can feel echoes from long ago. Can feel him, out there. Even the name makes her shudder. Cromwell. The name is a stab wound into the meat of her brain.