‘My mother,’ Erica says, and she takes Vee’s hand in her own. Vee can feel a shaking in her skin, vibration in her palm, as though every cell of her has become held breath. ‘Was Leonie my mother? You just said, you knew what it was to be a child without a mother.’ Erica’s body is leaning into Vee’s, her weight against her shoulder, as though she is a child again, waiting for comfort, for love.

Vee closes her eyes – the lights in her vision don’t switch off, just shine brighter against the blessed black – and pulls a breath in, deep. This would be the time. If she was certain. Would Leonie thank her for it, if she was?

She can feel how Erica is waiting.

Now is the time.

She puts a hand to her face, and reaches for the bench with the other, holding tight. Vertigo, or worse, ‘I need to get home.’ It’s like unlatching a door that the wind has been teasing its way around: there’s a rush and thud of pain, head, neck, face, spine, and she isn’t in this room anymore, isn’t anywhere except in this burning darkness at the back of her left eye socket. Please, not her sight. Not yet.

25 April 2018

25 April 2018

‘I’M SORRY I’M LATE,’ Erica says, almost as soon as her key has moved the front door away from its frame, ‘I just wanted to walk it one more time, and then I got talking to some of the staff, and it just felt as if I couldn’t leave. Once this week is over, I’ll be more . . .’ she pauses, because she’s not sure what the word is. More present? More reliable? More undemanding? Not for the first time, she’s glad Vee doesn’t see her at home. She bends and unzips her boots, slides them off. Her feet exhale and relax to flatness on the floor. It must be four months since she went to a yoga class. She hangs up her coat, then stretches her arms above her head. She has been hunching over the vitrines, poring over the detail.

There’s no sign of Tom but there is the sound of his half-snore, half-breathing coming through the monitor, eerie in the space when Erica has stopped talking.

‘It’s OK,’ Marcus says.