Shane stops plucking. He blinks, slowly. His eyes are black. He puts out a hand to touch my chin.

‘Don’t, Shane,’ I say. I step backward.

Don’t look at him. Don’t look at him.

‘I don’t need your help.’

He lets go of the turkey.

‘I don’t need your help.’ I rub my chin and try not to look up.

Then Shane smashes the turkey with his fist like it’s a punchbag. White feathers and claws and a bloody neck swing towards my face. I duck. Feathers skate across my hair.

Sheepskin Coat comes over. ‘If you’re going to distract my workers, blondie, then you can forget it,’ he says. His voice is loud but he’s giving me a half-smirk. ‘Get on with it, now. All of you.’

He walks Shane back to the other side of the shed, leaving my bird swaying on its hook.

Rob leans over. ‘What’s with him?’

I don’t have an answer.

He puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘You OK?’

I nod, try a brave smile.

On the other side of the shed, Shane’s craning his neck round his turkey, looking for me again.

I plunge my hand into the feathers and start plucking. Soon I’m stripping birds clean in under fifteen minutes.

fifteen: Howard, December, 1985

fifteen

Howard

December, 1985

That evening, I went to find him.

I didn’t know what I was going to say. That he mustn’t think of leaving. That he couldn’t be what his mother said he was. That I loved him. That I couldn’t understand what was wrong with him. What was wrong with me.

I had thought he might not go through with the turkey plucking plan, even though Luke was doing it. I’d told him he didn’t need to go there; I’d get him a job with me at the power station – cleaning the offices at weekends, perhaps. I couldn’t imagine Robert on that farm. He was like me, too neat for dirty work. It wasn’t uncommon, I’d heard, for a bird to be still half-conscious when it was plucked. Like the headless chickens you hear about, still running round the yard. That wasn’t the sort of thing I had the stomach for.

I put on my wellingtons before I went down there, thinking the turkey shed might be mucky. I didn’t consider the fact that all the birds would be dead, and the sawdust would be covered with feathers, soft and light, not mucky at all.