‘I’ll bid you goodnight, Mrs Hemlock. I do not want us to meet again but something tells me there is little I can do to influence that matter. Please, do place some flowers on your son’s grave for me, should you choose a resting place where those other than yourself can pay their respects. I know the boy’s father would dearly love to have been able to send lilies. Perhaps he will yet get opportunity to do so. Good night.’

I managed to stay on my feet until he had climbed inside the vehicle and driven away. His car purred as he backed out of the parking space. He did not switch the lights on until he was out of sight. I could not make out the registration plate or the identity of the passenger.

Only when the car was out of sight did I give in. I slid to the floor as if made of wet paper; hands upon my face and my knees drawn up like a child’s.

I didn’t respond when Heron said my name. Just scrunched up my eyes and shook my head and thought of my boy. Smiling. Playing. Laughing. Then fading. Dying. Dead. My boy. Dead. Taken. Gone …

He scraped me off the floor like I was an injured doe.

‘Don’t worry, lass,’ he said, and his nose touched my damp cheek as he whispered into my ear. ‘I heard nowt. And that which I did hear will go no further. You were a good mother to that boy and there aint no wickedness in you. You were sent, lass. That’s what I knew first time I saw you. This place. This time. You didn’t choose it. You’re here to do right. And I’m glad to know you.’

This time, when the tears came, I thought of the water gurgling at the foot of the cliff.

And in my mind it carried an accumulation of miseries; a surging crimson torrent containing all the sticks and all the bones; all the stones and all the tears, of all the years. These were tears I shed for people unknown. For lives I had never touched and which were no more to my own existence than pebbles in the water. And yet I wept for their pain and their absence.

I huddled into him as he carried me. I didn’t feel the rain until it had already soaked him to the skin.

FELICITY

Transcript 0008, recorded October 30, 2010

There wasn’t enough hot water for a proper bath. It were only an inch deep when the hot ran out. I boiled the kettle twice and did my best to make it a bit more comfortable for him but I don’t think he’d have cared if he were frozen or scalded. He just sat there, all pink and goose-pimpled and naked, hugging his legs and resting his face on his knees.