‘You’re beautiful, tiger,’ he said. ‘Not a bastard.’

A whole night of it, taking turns with Franklin. The gaps between his breaths growing longer, as if he was extending the arm-pull and the kick, not needing to turn his head.

‘I wasn’t,’ he said, his words slurred, and Matty blinked, tried to be awake. ‘I wasn’t there,’ he said, and his breath smelt of old potatoes. He fumbled for a hand. ‘I wasn’t there.’ His throat was clogged with liquid.

‘You were. I told you.’ Matty tapped a temple. ‘Always bugging me. Feckin’ this and feckin’ that all the time.’

A smile, struggling to get to the surface. ‘Ah, God.’ He stared upwards and Matty imagined his lungs, filling. The ceiling with a sway, the bright world refracted above it.

They held hands.

‘Dad,’ Matty had said.

And he had gone, riverwater into seawater.

***

‘Is he in heaven?’ Sheanna was curled up like a shell on her bed, her toys around her.

Matty had been sleeping on the floor beside her. Looked up at the ceiling. Stars stuck on there, as there had been in Golders Green. ‘Yeah.’

‘Does it take long to get there?’ Her voice was shrunken, exhausted.

‘He’s just introducing himself to everyone.’ One part of Matty was here, present and practical, answering these questions, making Franklin eat, and the other was a numb knot of grief.

Sheanna had thrown a tantrum at her friend’s house and been brought back before Joe was taken away. She’d gone into their room, kissed him on the cheek and touched him there, a small, testing prod with one finger.

‘Does he have angel-wings?’

‘Yep.’

‘He’ll get into trouble if he swears.’ Impossibly forlorn.

‘No, he won’t. You can do what you like there.’

Sheanna sat up, her hair matted on the side of her face. Peered over. ‘But – is heaven real?’

Matty sat up, too. Elbows on knees. ‘Do you think mermaids are real?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Do you remember in your book? About the manatees? How sailors thought they were mermaids?’

She nodded. ‘They sang and everything.’

‘Well, maybe it’s real but not in the way that we think. Maybe it’s not up there.’

She lay down again. ‘It’s down in the ground? Or under the water?’

‘Yeah.’ Matty lay down on the carpet again, too. ‘It’s under the water.’

The funeral was in a small church two villages away. Lots of people there, from the village and work. Maureen looking stoic. Sheanna the quietest she’d ever been.

At the crematorium, they had played Kris Kristofferson and Matty had got up, stumbled out. Breathed in the damp air.

***

Matty stood motionless among the trees as the dark came in, fingering the letter in one pocket. Handwritten, on paper with stocky teddy bears in the corner, posted to Heather’s. Sheanna thought it the coolest thing ever to sometimes live in a pub.