That night he dreamed for the first time. He got up before the images could settle, but the memory of blood sprouting from his knuckles was in his head and if he wasn’t careful, worse would follow. He stood at the window, staring at the black scope of sky, and thought of his father glaring at the front door the day his mother left, as if persistence alone was enough to make it swing open and reveal her. He had set a chair there and two bottles. Hours he seemed to sit.

“She’ll be back,” he had said, and Harold lay in his bed, his body so taut with listening he felt he was more silence than boy. In the morning, her frocks were strewn like empty mothers all over the small house. Some were even perched in the scrap of grass they called a front lawn.

“What’s been going on?” said the lady from next door.

Harold had collected the clothes in his arms and screwed them into a ball. His mother’s deep smell was so vividly present it was impossible to credit she wasn’t coming back. He had had to shove his nails into his elbows in order not to make a noise. Playing the scene again, he watched the darkness loosen from the night sky. Once he was calm, he returned to bed.

A few hours later, he couldn’t understand what had changed. He could hardly move. The blisters he could bear if he cushioned them with plasters, but every time he put any weight on his right foot it caused a spasmic pain to shoot from the back of his ankle into his calf. He did all his usual things; he showered, ate and repacked his plastic bag before paying his bill, but every time he tested it, the pain in his lower leg was still there. The sky was a cold cobalt blue, with the sun low over the horizon, so that vapour trails shone a luminous white. Harold followed Silver Street towards the A396, but failed to see what he passed. He had to stop every twenty minutes to roll down his sock and pinch at the muscle in his leg. To his relief there was no sign of damage.