There was no thought in my head about what I was going to do, but I reached down and I picked the pistol up off the floor. It was all slick and slippery in my hand. I took care not to stand in Mummy Joy’s blood as I went to the door, for I thought that would be a terrible sin.

I stepped over Mummy Noreen’s legs and went to the bottom of the stairs. From up above, I could hear Daddy George weeping, an awful desperate sound. I started climbing the stairs and I heard him clearer as I reached the top. His bedroom door was open and even though his lamp wasn’t lit, I could see him in the darkness, sitting on the edge of his bed. He saw me watching and he dropped his head in shame. I walked along the landing and into his room, the pistol heavy and cold and wet in my hand.

He looked up at me again and I could see the tears glistening in his eyes and on his cheeks. Says he, I hid that gun in the kitchen. I thought if Da said no, I couldn’t leave, I’d take that gun and do myself in. But they were right, you know. I am weak. And I’m stupid. I don’t even have it in me to kill myself.

Says I, It’s all right. You don’t have to.

Just then, I don’t know for why, I minded this one Sunday afternoon when Daddy George carried a calf out of the cowshed and into the yard. One of its back legs was broken and hanging from it all wrong. He laid it down on the concrete and called Daddy Ivan out, asked him to help it. Daddy Ivan went back into the kitchen and came out with the big knife in his hand. He opened the calf’s throat and the blood poured out.

No call to let the cratur suffer, says he.

I minded that time, and I lifted the pistol up in both my hands and I put the snout of it agin Daddy George’s forehead.

I thought of all the years I’d been there in thon room under the house, living in the damp and the dirt. All the years Mummy Joy and Mummy Noreen had been there. All the hidings they’d took, all the bruises they’d had, all the bloody lips and black eyes. I thought of the times they’d been called upstairs and I’d filled a bath for them before I was sent back down into the dark. I thought of the times Mummy Joy had come down the stairs, the shame and the tears on her face, the stink of him on her body.