Matty let the door slam. It had been a long, looping route back home through the park, the sun beginning to turn the grass beige. Then into the woods with their thigh-high nettles. There had been a magpie following from tree to tree, as if Matty was a shiny coin to be nicked and taken back to its nest.

Mamma was in the living room, with the curtains drawn. Silver-blue light from the old film on TV. She liked these ones best, the type with women who stood in the shadows of window-blinds and talked very fast, where everyone smoked, and kissed funny, pressing their mouths together and rolling their faces about.

‘You’re a bloody romantic,’ Dad had said once, to Mamma, having lost an argument about turning over to watch The Great Escape. ‘You should have been born in the 1910s, I reckon.’ He’d say that she was a glamourpuss, that she could be in one of those films, and Matty would imagine her swaying down a foggy black-and-white alley in her fur coat and, by Mamma’s dreamy expression, was sure that she was picturing it, too.

Now, though, she was staring at it blankly, a cigarette between her fingers. The ashy part was long, and beginning to curve downwards.

She had still not cried. It had been eleven days and Mamma had not cried once.

Better not to ask what was for tea now. Baked beans and cheese on toast and hot dogs in a tin had been tea all week. Only once had Mamma made anything, boiling eggs and leaving them for Matty to smash with the teaspoon. She’d chucked her own dinner in the kitchen bin.

There was a strange, sharp feeling in the room, like the air had gone radioactive.

‘Mamma?’

Mamma didn’t turn her head. Shadows from the curtain and the TV on her hair. A tissue, or maybe it was a piece of paper, clenched in her fist.

The ash from the cigarette dropped onto the carpet in grey snowflakes.

‘Go to bed,’ she said, to the wall.

It was only seven o’clock. But Matty did anyway, stomach growling like a guard dog. Took up two packets of salt and shake crisps. Read Deadwood City.

Didn’t sleep.

Chapter 3

A jangling, hard sound.

It was another hot morning, everything feeling sticky. Ankles aching. Different parts kept aching at the moment, and if they weren’t aching, they were itching. Matty had been dreaming about Dad again, this time diving into a big lake covered in green algae like a rug, looking for treasure. Only his heart and lungs had risen to the surface.

Mamma was in the kitchen, the handle of a mug in her hand, the rest of it cracked into pieces on the lino. She didn’t seem surprised.