Then I say what I’m thinking. ‘I have a boyfriend, you know, back home. I shouldn’t have done what we did.’

Oddly, he smiles. ‘Same! I was going to say something, but I thought it was wrong to tell you while you’re here, in the infirmary. I’m engaged, would you believe it. So I should feel worse than you.’

I squint at him in the greenish light. He seems way too happy.

‘Do you?’ I ask.

He shakes his head. ‘Do you? Feel guilty?’

‘Yes. But I always do. It’s a familiar sensation.’

I pull at a thread on the cotton blanket. My hair hasn’t been washed since I’ve been in the infirmary and I can smell it, greasy and lank, like a half-open curtain I can duck behind.

He’s still shaking his head, and I don’t think he realises he’s doing it.

‘I wonder if there’s something wrong with me for not feeling guilty. I probably shouldn’t be getting married. But I love her. I just—’

‘It’s fine. You don’t need to explain it to me.’

I don’t actually want to know. I watch him smile, and feel a shudder as much for myself as him. At our mutual desperation to feel wanted.

He stands and brushes invisible lint from his pressed pants and I see the shininess of his shoes, the perfect half-moon of cuticle on his fingernails.

I am as blind to myself as I was to him.

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 29

Where does sorrow bring you? Closer to home or further from it? The small city of Roanoke was suddenly before us: first the bleak brick and sprawling football fields of the high school, then the tall ornate courthouse and the Elwood Diner. The train tracks cut through the centre of the city like a gash. The smell of burning coal replaced that of hogs and chickens. Mrs Jackson drove right up to the train station and stopped the truck out front, cutting the engine with the same certainty she cut biscuits. She lowered herself out of the cab. ‘You, boy,’ I heard her say. ‘Get that trunk for me and take it to the station agent’s office. We need to get a ticket to Washington.’

A porter heaved my trunk out of the truck bed and Mrs Jackson bustled towards the ticket office, looking back just long enough to make sure I followed. Her purse slapped against her side as she walked, and the sleeve of her dress had a splotch of flour from breakfast.

Mrs Jackson rapped the glass window of the ticket counter, startling the young man dozing with his head on the desk behind it. ‘One ticket to Washington DC.’

He mumbled something I didn’t hear.

‘Not return—she’s goin’ to visit a sick friend. She’ll buy the return once she knows when she’s fixing to get back.’