‘Of course with me!’ You are so angry. ‘Don’t you even know what I do? You turn up here, five years we haven’t spoken, and you say you can help me. You know nothing about my life.’

‘But I’m your mother,’ I say.

You’re shaking your head and it’s awful, the look in your eyes, I can’t stand it.

‘Those poor children,’ you say, ‘I am just one of those children you’ve created.’

‘Please … Don’t …’

‘Like them, I have no mother.’

The door slams, and I disappear.

I disappear to the edge of the land. To a lighthouse built on a witches’ coven – a strip of rock reaching out in blacks and browns to the crashing waves – and no one comes to find me.

Until now. I can hear it. I thought I was imagining it but I can hear it. Someone is knocking on my door. A steady and slow knock. Knock. Knock.

From where I am sitting I can see a shadow of a man at the door. The letter box flap just rose and fell again, making the clanking noise that it does – a noise that I had forgotten. I suspect he was just looking in.

Now I can see the Asda van outside and I can see the Asda man, who is not my Asda man, who is a stranger, stacking up crates outside my front door. I left a note with instructions, just in case. I said I did not want to be disturbed.

Perhaps I should go and talk to this stranger, to ask him where my Asda man is and if he will ever come back. But I won’t. Because now you know that I chose silence when I should have screamed, that I gave up when I should have stayed to fight. Now you know that I am a coward.

I am a coward, and I made a mistake, and I do not feel well today.

Chapter 15

EVA WOKE UP with the rhythmic sound of the waves hitting the rocks beyond the campsite and felt her head pressed snugly between the curve of her camping pillow and the warmth of Piotr’s shoulder. Beside her Piotr was sleeping, she could tell from the rate of his breathing and the weight of his arm around her – when he woke, the first thing that happened was that his arm became lighter. She didn’t know if it was subconscious or if he was being considerate, but she loved it either way. The sun hadn’t risen yet and she held Piotr’s arm tight around her, breathed in the smell of him.