‘I can leave you alone,’ I said, and the steam rose from the water to form a little cloud below the ceiling. I didn’t want him feeling funny about being naked in front of his mam. They can be like that, can boys. ‘Brian? Good scrub. Feel better.’

He gave the smallest shrug. He looked like he did when he was small and the fever nearly took him. Dark under his eyes and skin that looked like he’d been slapped all over. He looked at me the same way then, too – as if something awful was happening to him that I should have the power to prevent. It broke my heart when he were small and it broke my heart that night too.

‘Shall I do it then?’

He nodded again, and I decided not to notice the tears that trickled from the corners of his eyes and dripped into the water.

I took the flannel and rubbed it against the soap. Big, chunky soap, the size of a sandwich. Got you proper clean and turned your bathwater the colour of October skies. Scrubbed his back and his neck and both arms and legs. Lifted his arm and did his armpits. Handed him the flannel without a word so he could tend to his own business. He did as he was bid. When I stood up my knees cracked and I felt a sharp pain down my side.

‘Do you want in after me?’ he asked, quietly.

I smiled, pleased that he had thought to ask. He wasn’t sulking exactly, though John had given him a telling off that would have stripped the skin off some people. He just looked fragile. He’d been gone the best part of five hours and I’d spent most of it with my fingers gripped tight around the material of the sofa. I was like a bird perched on a branch. I had to hold myself still or I swear I’d have shaken myself to bits. It’s a terrible thing is that kind of fear. Everybody knows what it is to be scared but until you’ve imagined never seeing your children again, you don’t know the half of it. Thinking rationally, there was no way Pike would have risked prison just to teach a young lad a lesson. But terror isn’t rational and as the time ticked away in the aftermath of Pike’s warning gunshot blast, my imagination started playing pictures. I kept seeing him with blood coming out of his nose and his mouth – all broken and twisted on the riverbed. I saw him with a tree branch stuck through his middle and his head hanging forward on his chest. I saw him with bulging eyes and lolling tongue with a rope burning his skin beneath his jaw. I saw him dead on the grass outside the church: blue suit and brown shoes.