Smiling all the while, my mother holds the button to her fine-boned nose and inhales, and I imagine the scent of my pocket lining, with all the little things that go in and out of that: the scent of the streets. She presses the ball of her thumb against that outline of the bear. The symbol we all know so well, the symbol that has oppressed us for years.

“Leho, however did you get it?”

I can’t help the feeling of pride and satisfaction, the daring of it, as I sit on her bed and lean forwards, readying in my mind how to tell the story to capture her imagination. “I crept into their barracks–” I begin, the way Jorzy starts his stories, slow at first, inching it out.

“Which one?” Ma always wants to know every detail.

“The small one on Miter Street,” I tell her, and wait till she nods before I continue. “They were outside on drill duty, dawn.”

“Wet? Dry?”

“The cobbles were dry.” Again Ma nods, remembering her city. “The side door, down the alley, where they put their rubbish, was open.” She is breathing through her mouth, and I know she’s seeing it, seeing me creep past the battered grey bins crammed full of stinking Black Mark rubbish. “So I went in. There was a jacket, hung on a chair.”

“What kind of room?” She frowns. I’m not all that good at describing places for her, but I try.

“To the left of the doorway, a kitchen area. Table. A copper urn in the fireplace. Water was heating. I didn’t have much time. Beds were lined up on either side of the room. The glass windows were painted grey, so you can’t see in.”

“Or out,” she comments, satisfied. Like some other Cerels, she believes the grunts are the most abused, the most oblivious of the Black Marks, the ones who are deliberately kept ignorant.

“At the table, thirteen chairs.”

“An unlucky number,” my canny mother says smugly.

“The jacket was on the chair closest to the door. I slipped off the top button with my knife.”

Ma leans her head back then, and laughs softly. “Ah, you have done well, my son.” She reaches out for my hand, and presses the button into my palm. “Put it with the other things,” she whispers. It’s our secret: all the things I’ve brought back for her, often illegal, things that I should never have laid hands on in the first place, let alone kept.