She’d left the Vanguard where she’d found it, with the keys inside the wheel arch, near the bend of Hungry Hill Lane. The cash, she’d stuffed into her handbag. The roadmap, she’d torn up and cast away into the hedges. On the back seat, she’d found something else and almost retched. Mal’s chip-bag hat. She’d held it for a while, squeezing the fabric, thinking back to how he’d sauntered to the car in it, so full of life, and then the pale, carbuncled look of him as he lay dead. It wasn’t grief for him that made her queasy; it was pity for herself, a loathing for the person she’d become. Along the Ockham Road, she’d dropped the hat into a storm drain.

Now, her heavy breaths were steaming as she walked. The track was hard and frosted. There were mocking voices in the darkness of the copse, the gossip of the tawny owls. She knew their conversation. Hasn’t any scruples, that one. Shine a penny up and she’d be yours. As she approached the yard, she looked to Charlie’s bedroom, but he wasn’t there. The fast scrape of her shoes upon the gravel startled her. That crunching sound. She’d have to suffer it from this day on, no flinching when she heard it. All she needed was a cigarette to calm her nerves before she went inside. On certain mornings, in the midst of yardwork, she would pick a dog-end from the stones below her brother’s window, smoke the last few knockings of it while the hens pecked in the yard. Back in borstal, one puff on a rollie was a pleasure she would beg the other girls for; it could see her through a week. She wandered over, searched the gravel till she found a dog-end, dry and decent. The hens were quietly roosting in their little hutch tonight. The tractor had been covered with a tarp to stop it seizing in the frost – lately, Mr Mayhood had been checking the barometer more often, fearing snow.

One good thing she’d done tonight was pack the matches in her bag. She leaned against the bricks with the pathetic ciggie in her lips, rehearsing what she’d say. How well her evening with her fella from the post office had gone. How sweet he’d been for taking her to watch a jazz band at a club in Guildford. How long into the night they’d danced, missing the lateness of the hour. There were certain pieces lacking in the story, but she’d make it more persuasive in the telling.

As she struck the match, the flame revealed the bloodspots on her fingers. Another dried-on spray of it across her knuckles, on her coat cuff, too. And lower down: more splashes on her skirt, her shins, her ankles. The match was scorching her; she blew it out. She thought of washing at the outside tap, but the icy water would be torture, if it wasn’t frozen in the pipes by now, and blood would never shift from wool – the sleeve was speckled, wrist to elbow. Even now, Mal Duggan’s mess was hounding her. He’d never be rinsed off.