So this morning when Sarge started talking about her I didn’t know what to think. At first I thought it was another test so I was careful how I reacted. But it soon became clear that he was being sincere. After a while he sat down at the table next to me and I plucked up the courage to ask him about my mother. There were so many things I wanted to know: what did she sound like, what did she smell like, what was her favourite food, her favourite colour? But in the end my question was a simple one: what was her name?

Sarge frowned at first and I thought he was going to tell me to shush but instead he put his head in his hands, stared straight ahead and started to speak, as if he was talking to some invisible person, not me.

He told me that my mother’s name was Noora. I liked it immediately. It sounded like a whisper, or a fairy’s sigh as Sarge used to call whispers when I was a kid. I rolled her name up and over my tongue until it became as familiar as the face in the photo. He said he’d met her in the big war, said she’d been hired by something called the UN to help the soldiers understand the Arabic words that the enemy were using. I asked if she knew how to use a gun and he said she didn’t have to; that words were her weapons. I wasn’t too sure what that meant but it sounded like she had a good mind. I wanted to ask Sarge about those words on the back of the photo and whether she had written them but then I remembered how angry he’d been that day so instead I asked him what she was like. He smiled then and I was relieved because every question was a potential explosion. She was kind and gentle, he said, with these amazing eyes that changed colour as you looked at them: first brown, then hazel, then amber. Sarge’s voice went quiet as he described her skin. It was warm and soft, he said, and it smelt of orange groves and sugar, and when she smiled it felt like he’d come home.

His eyes went all glazed then and I knew I should have kept quiet but my eyes had turned to water too and there was a question burning inside me that I had to get out.

‘How did she die?’

He flinched at the words, it was like I’d smacked him in the face. Then, without looking at me, he pushed the chair back, stood up and walked into the garden.

I sat by myself for a bit, turning over in my head all the new things I’d learned about my mother. Then I heard a loud bang outside and my heart leapt inside my chest. I jumped up and ran out back.

The first thing I saw was an empty cage lying on its side by the door. Sarge must have picked it up and thrown it. Then I saw him. He was standing by the boundary wall, looking out at the woods. I walked quietly towards him, hoping that when he turned round he wouldn’t have that look on his face, the one that comes when he’s hearing the voices.