I ease the door open as quietly as possible. There is someone on the sofa – or, at least, the shadow of someone. They are black and grey, like a memorial tattoo, and it’s only when she says my name that I realize it’s my mum. But she’s not the woman I left when I went to Featherstone; she’s not the mother who told me, “Just do what you have to do to stay safe.” She’s a bad sketch, a crumpled picture thrown away. And the starkest difference grips me tightly around the throat: across her face is a fierce slash of black ink – a diagonal cheekbone-to-jaw tear that cuts across her nose. She has been tattooed with a mark I’ve never seen before and I can’t help but read her, for this mark screams violence and disgrace. It is all pain and punishment. This mark has left her lonely, afraid and all but forgotten.

I had wondered what I was going to say. But there’s no space for words. I kneel at her feet and she cups my face in her hands. With the soft pad of her thumb she wipes my tears away and kisses my cheeks. I reach up and touch the mark on her face, and she closes her eyes in hurt and shame. I rise and plant three soft kisses across the ink. She takes my hand, and she leads me upstairs.

I am home.

My bedroom has been left untouched since I left, and Mum insists on tucking me in. But I can’t sleep, and after a while I creep into her bed and fall asleep with her holding on to my hand.

I dream I am cradling a baby. I stand at the riverside listening to the whisper of wind in the reeds, the rush of the water as it laps over rocks. The baby makes no sound when I lay it in the box. I do not nail the box shut – for this baby is no king. I don’t want it to return in three days and be made a god. No, this baby who smiles at me from their basket must not come back. Not until the time is right.

“Don’t be a king or queen,” I whisper. “Don’t be a miracle maker.”

I lift the basket and set it down in the reeds, watching as the water sucks it into the current, and as the basket floats away on the wild waters I call out.

“Be brave, be good. Be free of these dreams and stories and fights. Know peace, and if you find it, bring it back. But not yet. Not yet…”

And the baby in the basket laughs as it floats downstream.