The Things We Never Said (13 page)

The retching comes from so deep within her she wonders if she will vomit the baby right up into the stone sink. She’s never been so sick. It seems to go on forever and she’s so consumed that she doesn’t hear Dot shouting down the stairs.

Dot has made a mistake; she forgot her WRVS meeting was cancelled this week so she came home, planning to get on with her needlework and then put her feet up and listen to the wireless.

‘Who’s in there?’ Dot shouts, banging on the door which immediately swings open because Maggie hasn’t bothered to lock it.

Maggie is hanging over the sink, thinking she’s about to die, when she feels a cold blast of air and notices the movement of the steam.

Dot is looking at her as though she cannot believe her eyes. Maggie retches again, then the roaring in her ears makes everything go red and she passes out cold on the floor.

She comes round to find Dot wiping her face with a flannel. It takes her a moment to work out where she is, then she remembers why she’s in the bathroom. She sits up, then tries to stand, but Dot tells her to stay still. The steam has cleared now and she can tell by the gurgling noises that Dot has emptied the bath.

‘Right,’ Dot says, straightening up. ‘How much did tha drink?’

‘About half,’ Maggie replies. She feels remarkably sober, considering.

‘With a bit of luck, you’ll have brought it all up.’ She doesn’t look at Maggie and she is talking through her teeth. ‘This is a respectable house, this is. I’m going upstairs now but I’ll be keeping an eye on thee. If owt starts to happen, I’ll call an ambulance.’

‘No, please . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else—’

‘A respectable house,’ Dot says again, opening the door. Maggie can hear her muttering as she climbs the stairs:
After all I’ve done . . . no gratitude . . . that sort of girl
.

Maggie starts to gather her things. She is too tired, too drained even to weep. Then her legs tremble and she feels dizzy again. She mustn’t faint; she puts her hand on the steam-wet wall to steady herself, but then a powerful cramp grips her stomach and spreads around her middle.
My God,
she thinks.
This must be it; it’s actually working.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The six of them, all with white beards and pointy hats, are squashed together in what is little more than a broom cupboard at the rear of the auditorium. The idea is that if Sneezy appears in front of the stage just before curtain up, the audience will be so busy watching his antics that they won’t notice the rest of the dwarves creeping out behind them in the darkness, ready to hi-ho their way down the aisles and onto the stage.

Jonathan peers through the crack in the door. It’s airless in the tiny space, humid with exhaled breath. He tries to shift position but given the proximity of the other dwarves he can barely move. Sweat starts to prickle under his arms, and he runs his finger under his collar to lift it away from the clammy skin on the back of his neck. What doesn’t help is that he is absolutely certain he saw Ryan Jenkins just now, hanging around outside with a couple of other boys.

‘I’m sure it was him, you know,’ he whispers to Malcolm.

‘Unlikely. Not really their manor, is it? And – oh, here we go.’

Sneezy has started his major sneezing routine so the rest of them begin sliding out of the cupboard. At the cue, Dozy lifts his shovel onto his shoulder and sings a long, loud
hi-ho
. The others follow suit with their shovels, then begin singing the hi-ho song as they march down the darkened aisle towards the brightly lit stage. Jonathan is last in line, and as he sees all the heads turning around to watch them, everybody smiling, the rapt faces of the little kids, he begins to think that maybe life isn’t so bad after all.

And then smack, he’s on the floor. He scrambles to his feet. His wrist hurts and he’s grazed the side of his face.

‘You all right, mate?’ A pony-tailed man with a gold stud in his nose and a toddler on his lap hands him the shovel. ‘You must have tripped.’

Jonathan looks behind him. There’s no crease in the carpet, no handbag left carelessly in the aisle. The audience laughs.

‘Smi-ley!’ The other dwarves are standing at the front, hands on hips; Malcolm is giving him a look, doing his best to make it all part of the show.

Jonathan scans the laughing faces, but the lighting makes it difficult to see more than the few that are nearest to him. For a moment, he thinks he recognises a Year 10 boy a little way along the row, but he’s mistaken. Even the nose-stud man is grinning now.

‘Hurry up, Smiley,’ Malcolm shouts, still in character. ‘Snow White’ll be here soon and if she finds you hanging around down there, it’ll be early to bed and no telly for you!’

They’re all laughing at him now, enjoying his humiliation. He can feel the sweat beading on his upper lip; his heart is beating hard, like he’s just run up a flight of stairs. He looks around the auditorium; Fiona’s out there somewhere, witnessing this, seeing him made a fool of. He looks again at row upon row of laughing faces, but doesn’t recognise any of them. Maybe he
is
overreacting. He tries to gather himself, knows he should put on his biggest smile, sing a loud
hi-ho
and march merrily down the aisle with the others. But what if Ryan Jenkins is out there, poised to start heckling or throwing things at the stage? Jonathan’s anger is pulsing in his temples; he’s not sure he trusts himself any more. He begins walking slowly towards the front, trying to balance reason against suspicion. He can feel them all watching. They’re only kids, he tells himself; it was a coincidence. It’s just an audience full of kids, laughing at the panto like they’re supposed to. Now is his chance to pull it back; just march the march and sing the bloody song. Just do it. He continues down the aisle. All he has to do is walk up those wooden steps and onto the stage, then smile and bow and carry on with the show. But his legs seem to be acting on their own. As he walks, he has the strangest sensation that he has stepped outside of his own body. The expression
beside myself
comes into his mind as he watches himself walking towards the stage, then on past Malcolm and the others, and out through the door at the side. A moment later, he is almost surprised to find himself, light-headed and slightly shaky, standing behind the stage in the darkened space that doubles as a dressing room. He sits down among the bags and coats and boxes of props and considers what he’s just done; he’s actually walked out of a performance. What he wouldn’t give now for a cigarette. And then he hears the voices onstage, a wave of laughter, then another, louder, no doubt at his expense. Well, fuck them. Fuck the lot of them.

*

‘It’s just for a few days,’ Fiona says, putting her suitcase by the door. ‘I’m not leaving you. I’m just, I don’t know . . . tired.’

‘If you’re tired, rest. Why do you need to go to your mum’s, for God’s sake? I can look after you here,’ Jonathan says. He’s been trying to sound rational and calm, but he can feel panic beginning to rise. This can’t be happening, not to him; not to them.

‘I don’t just mean that sort of tired.’ She sighs irritably. ‘I mean I’m tired of . . . of all this; of everything that’s happening. I need a break.’

‘A break from me?’

‘Look, I can’t even think straight now. Just let me do this, okay?’ She is standing next to her case, with her car keys in her hand. She won’t look at him; he feels sick.

‘Is it because of the other night?’

She sighs again. ‘It’s not just that. Though it was pretty bloody embarrassing to have to sit there watching while you walked out like a stroppy child.’

He opens his mouth to defend himself, but what’s the point. She’s right.

‘Everyone was looking at me, Jonathan. And I was right in the middle of the row so I couldn’t even get out of the place quickly – they all had to stand up to let me pass.’ She shakes her head. ‘And now it’s in the bloody local paper.’

This week’s
Mercury
is still open on the kitchen table. The headline reads:
Smiley turns Grumpy
. Which really doesn’t help. ‘It’s only a tiny article.’

‘Plenty of people’ll see it. And anyway, that’s not the point. I know it’s a difficult time, but tipping half a bottle of vintage port down your neck on Christmas Eve isn’t a very mature way of handling stress, is it?’ She’s looking at him now, her face tight with anger.

Well, you buggered off to bed at half past nine
, he wants to say, but even in his head it sounds selfish. He looks at the floor. ‘I know; you’re right.’

‘And you’re not even trying to cope. You’re drinking too much, you’re still not sleeping—’

‘That’s hardly my fault, is it?’

‘No, but refusing to see the doctor is. You’ve not been sleeping for months now, and all you need to do is—’

‘Please don’t shout.’

‘I’m not shouting,’ she yells, banging her keys on the hall table. ‘I just want you to take some responsibility.’ She grabs her coat from the rack. ‘Seeing a doctor doesn’t make you less of a man, you know.’

‘All right, all right. I’ll see the bloody doctor if it’ll make you happy.’

‘It’s not to make me happy, it’s . . .’ She runs a hand through her hair. ‘Look,’ she says more gently. ‘This isn’t helping. We’ll talk in a while. Just let me have some time on my own, okay? Please.’

She reaches up and kisses him briefly but without warmth, and when he tries to hold her, she moves away. She opens the front door. ‘I need some breathing space. I’ll call in a few days. I promise.’ And she is gone.

Breathing space
, he thinks as the house tingles with the silence of a just-closed door. When someone says they need space . . .

*

Jonathan grimaces at his reflection as he pulls the razor through five days’ growth of coarse black stubble. His eyes are bloodshot and his skin has a yellowish tinge. These sleeping tablets make him feel like death, but they certainly work. Thank God his mother insisted on taking a taxi back from Euston. She’d taken the sleeper service from Edinburgh, so her train got in at 6.40; he’d never have been able to drag himself out of bed in time, never mind have his wits about him enough to drive through central London. He stands under the shower for several minutes, allowing the hot water to bring him back to life. He uses Fiona’s shower gel, closing his eyes so that he can imagine the familiar lemony scent is coming from her newly washed skin instead of his own. She’s been gone a week.

It starts to rain as he leaves the house. Next door’s cat is on the windowsill, sitting upright with its tail curled around its body in a perfect ‘C’. Jonathan pauses, holding the front door open behind him. ‘Well?’ he says to the tortoiseshell. ‘You coming in or not?’ The cat’s eyes narrow in a slow blink, its ears twitch, and the tip of its tail flicks very slightly. ‘Come on, Puss,’ he coaxes, reaching out to tickle it under the chin. But the cat, who usually spends more time with him and Fiona than with its owners, arches its body and hisses, then settles back down and eyes Jonathan as if he is the most unpleasant creature it has ever had the misfortune to encounter. ‘Sod you, then,’ he says, pulling the door shut behind him.

*

The windscreen wipers are on fast as he pulls up outside his mother’s, but even through the grey veil of rain, he recognises Hutchinson’s waxed jacket and the slight limp as he walks away from the house towards the main road. He sighs and switches the engine off.

She looks surprised to see him. ‘That man said you’d probably come today, but I didn’t expect you just yet.’ Her voice is thin and shaky. She motions him to follow her into the kitchen. The luggage from her trip is still in the hall. ‘You look dreadful,’ she says as she fills the kettle. He notices her hand is trembling. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about what happened? With your school? With the police?’

‘I didn’t . . . I don’t know. I suppose I was worried about what you’d think. That you might think I’d hit the boy . . .’

There is a silence. ‘Is that what you truly believe?’ She looks him in the eye. ‘That I’d think you capable of striking a child?’

He drops his gaze. ‘I didn’t think, I suppose. Not properly.’

‘False allegations against teachers: it’s happening all the time these days, according to the newspapers. Where are you up to with the whole thing?’

‘They can’t lift my suspension while I’m waiting for the court case, even though my solicitor’s fairly sure it’ll be thrown out. Seems teachers are different to the rest of the population – we’re guilty until proven innocent. Anyway, what did Hutchinson have to say?’

‘Well.’ She turns away and reaches for the cups and saucers. ‘He told me about all this DNA whatnot and that they’re looking for somebody who committed . . . and that . . .’ There’s a clatter as she drops both cups, one of which breaks.

‘Mum, sit down.’ He speaks softly as he guides her to a chair. His chest feels tight and he is almost afraid to breathe. What has she just discovered?

She takes a breath. ‘. . . and he said that that person was almost certainly closely related to you.’

‘Was it him? Could it be? Just tell me, Mum, please.’

‘Jonathan, I should have told you this before. I tried to, but . . .’ She tries to take a cigarette from the pack on the table, but her hands are shaking too much. He’s never seen her in this state before. This is it, he thinks. Nausea ripples faintly through him.

‘Mr Hutchinson wanted to know all about your father. But I couldn’t tell him anything, because, you see, darling . . .’ She looks up at him, her eyes small and frightened. ‘Gerald wasn’t your father.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Maggie paces the floor. All that pain and it still didn’t work. She is wondering what to do next when Dot raps on her door. Dot is grim-faced. She’s discussed it with Alf, she says, and they’re sorry but they can’t have that sort of thing going on under their roof.

‘But nothing happened,’ Maggie protests.

‘That’s not ’ point. How do I know you won’t try it again? Or summat worse? End o’t week, love. If you please.’

After Dot has gone downstairs, Maggie walks over to the window and lights a cigarette. Her head is packed with voices and pictures and everything is in a tangle. She looks out over the rooftops, many still covered with tarpaulins after the storm. It’s been raining all morning and over to the east the sky is inky-dark, heavy with the promise of another downpour. It seems to have rained every day for weeks. She stubs out her cigarette, puts her coat on and grabs her umbrella. She’d better go and have a look in the newsagent’s window, see if there are any cheap rooms available. As she pushes the door handle back on – it comes off in her hand every time – she hears voices in the hall: Dot’s low, gravelly rasp and a higher sound, a female voice she recognises.

‘I got your address from Una,’ Vanda says as she reaches the top of the stairs. She’s not smiling but nor is she looking as fierce as when Maggie last saw her. ‘I came to apologise. I shouldn’t have gone off at you like that.’

Maggie looks at the floor. ‘I’m sorry, too. I truly didn’t mean to offend you.’

‘I’m sure you didn’t. I
was
angry but I suppose I can be a bit sensitive. Anyway, I just wanted to say . . .’ She glances over her shoulder, down the stairs. ‘Look, don’t do the gin thing, it rarely works; just gives you a dicky tummy and a nasty hangover.’

Maggie nods. ‘I know; I tried it. Now my landlady’s throwing me out.’

‘Oh dear. I should have told you before.’ She sighs. ‘I tried it myself once. Didn’t work. I ended up going to a woman. I thought she knew what she was doing, but . . .’

‘That didn’t work either?’

‘Oh, it worked all right – made sure I wouldn’t be lumbered with a kid. Ever.’

It takes a moment for her meaning to sink in. ‘I’m very sorry,’ Maggie says. Vanda walks over to the window and looks out. ‘The boy, I mean the father. Is there no chance he’d—’

‘No, it’s not . . . it wasn’t . . . it . . .’ Maggie’s voice is barely more than a whisper, and then she stops because she really doesn’t want to cry.

Vanda turns to look at her. ‘Oh God. It was Jack, wasn’t it? Did he . . . did he force you?’

Maggie nods, and now she can’t stop the tears. Then Vanda’s arms are around her, and she allows herself to sob while Vanda rocks her like a baby. Vanda’s sweater feels warm and soft against her cheek, and she can smell Wright’s Coal Tar soap.

‘I’m sorry,’ Maggie says after a few moments. She straightens up and rummages in her pocket for a tissue. ‘I’m not even sure how it happened. I can only remember bits. I must have led him on, I suppose. I didn’t mean to. I’m not very experienced, you see. I shouldn’t have kissed him back.’

‘Don’t be so bloody daft,’ Vanda says. ‘I don’t hold with this nonsense that men can’t control themselves. They just say that to make us feel guilty.’ Vanda lights two cigarettes and hands one to Maggie. ‘Did he hurt you?’

‘Yes,’ Maggie nods. And she tells Vanda about the torn clothes and the cuts and the bruises and the bite mark.

Vanda is listening intently, then she shakes her head. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have . . .’ She covers her face with her hands. ‘Christ.’

Maggie looks at her.

‘There was always something about him that worried me.’ She takes a long drag of her cigarette. ‘When I was in rep with him in Leeds, he took this girl out, Pat. She was lovely, a bright, cheerful little thing; but after she went out with Jack that one night everything changed. She was off poorly for a couple of weeks, which is virtually unheard of in rep, as you know, and when she came back – by which time he’d disappeared, incidentally – it was like she was a different person.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘She hardly spoke. Looked awful, turned up late, missed performances. They kicked her out in the end, and she didn’t even seem to care. This was a girl who’d been in the chorus since she was fourteen and wanted to be a star.’ Vanda stubs out her cigarette. ‘That night at the party, I should have warned you.’

Maggie shakes her head, remembering how she’d suspected Vanda of being Jack’s ex. ‘I probably wouldn’t have listened. Anyway, there’s no point in . . . the important thing now is to do something about . . . this.’ She gestures towards her belly, still not quite believing something is actually growing in there.

‘You could probably get it done legally,’ Vanda says. ‘Under the circumstances.’

‘They wouldn’t believe me. For a start, most of it’s still a complete blank, and even if it wasn’t, I thought Jack was my new boyfriend, and you can’t be raped by your own boyfriend.’

Vanda sighs. ‘I see what you mean.’ There is a pause. ‘I do know someone,’ she says. ‘Someone I wish I’d known twelve years ago. He’s a doctor so he’d do it right, everything sterilised. I can ask him, but I’m not promising. And you’ll have to promise not to tell anyone I gave you his name.’

Maggie nods. There doesn’t seem to be any other option.

*

Maggie has a part in the current play – a maid, with one line, ‘very good, Madam’ – but she can’t enjoy the matinee because somehow she’s going to have to convince Clive she’s too ill for the evening performance. As it turns out, Clive can’t get her out of the theatre quickly enough – he doesn’t want flu sweeping through the entire company like it did in ’58, he explains.

The man who opens the door is tall and thin with a lot of grey hair and a carefully trimmed beard. ‘Can I help you?’ he asks. He’s wearing a blue and white flowery apron over dark trousers and a sagging grey cardigan. He doesn’t look like a doctor.

‘I’m not sure I have the right address.’

‘Who are you wanting to see?’ He looks her in the eye. ‘Maybe if you told me
your
name?’

‘Miss Harrison,’ she says. ‘Margaret Harrison.’

‘Ah yes. Miss Harrison. I’m expecting you, aren’t I? I’m Dr Montague. Come along in.’

He’s older than she’d imagined, quite elderly, in fact, and his movements are slow. He takes the apron off as he leads her along a narrow hallway, down some steps and along another corridor into a dark room at the back of the house. How odd it is to be seeing a doctor in the evening. He switches on the light. The room smells damp. It’s barely big enough to accommodate the oversized oak desk and the examination table, which pokes out from behind a dark-blue curtain. The wallpaper is bright red, spattered with big white flowers and tiny black birds, and on the chimney-breast there are three ceramic ducks in mid-flight, just like the ones in Dot’s front parlour.

‘Sit down, please.’ He waves her to the only chair. There’s a hissing sound as he turns on the gas fire. He fumbles with the matches for so long that she fears the place will blow up, but then there’s a loud pop and the fire begins to glow and warm the room.

He leans against the desk and folds his arms. ‘How far along are you?’ He doesn’t write anything down.

‘About eight weeks.’

‘I assume the young man is not prepared to marry you?’

She looks at her hands, shakes her head. Should she tell him the truth? Would he believe her?

‘Very well,’ he sighs. ‘The operation is simple but not entirely without risk.’

He explains what he’s going to do and what she can expect afterwards but Maggie isn’t listening. She doesn’t want details, she just wants it over.

‘You’ll need to empty your bladder,’ he says at last, ‘then we’ll get started.’

As she walks up the stairs to the toilet, she notices a moth, belly-up on the dusty windowsill, its legs shrivelled and its wings powdery with death. Poor thing; what a place to die. The walls are lined with pictures of the royal family, mostly formal – Princess Elizabeth as a young bride; her and Philip with Prince Charles and Princess Anne; being crowned queen at her coronation. But one picture, clearly torn out of a magazine and then framed, shows the queen dressed casually, no hat or gloves, holding baby Andrew in her arms and smiling at the camera. Maggie slowly reaches out and touches his chubby leg.

While she’s in the lavatory, she can hear raised voices. Briefly, she considers running down the stairs and out of the house. She could say she was afraid of the shouting. But then she hears the theme from
Z Cars
and she wishes she was back in Hastings with Leonard, a bottle of Tizer and a plate of toast on the floor between them, watching their brand new Rediffusion television set and gossiping about their colleagues at the hotel. Instead, she’s using the toilet in a strange house, in a strange town, prior to letting a strange man kill the thing that has attached itself to her womb.

She’s reassured to see that he’s now wearing a white coat. The examination couch is made up like a bed but with a heavy, dark-green cotton sheet tucked over the top of a brown rubber one. He’s standing on a pair of wooden steps, fixing something to the ceiling. His hands are spotted with age, the knuckles swollen and shiny with arthritis.

‘Twenty-five guineas, is that right?’ She reaches into her handbag for her post-office book with the crisp new notes tucked inside.

‘Ah yes.’ He steps down, and she sees the stirrups dangling from a bar on the ceiling. ‘Leave it on the desk, then slip your underthings off and pop up onto the couch.’

She turns away from him and starts to unclip her stockings.

‘Keep your nylons on. And your slip. I only need you to remove your, erm . . .’

She removes her briefs and puts them in her handbag, then she steps onto the footstool and climbs up onto the couch. She feels clammy, and she’s shivering.

‘Try to relax,’ he says, taking things out of the desk drawer and laying them on a metal tray.

Her legs are shaking so much she can see them moving. Her teeth start to chatter and she can hear her own breaths. She tries to hold on, tries to relax. Not long, and it’ll all be over. She watches the white-coated figure fussing around, lining things up. Why can’t he just get on with it? But when he turns towards her, the darkness closes in and she hears someone scream.

*

Vanda hands Maggie a cup of sweet tea. ‘Here, drink this,’ she says. She opens a packet of cigarettes and hands one to Maggie. ‘You really, truly don’t remember?’

Maggie shakes her head. ‘I remember climbing onto the couch, but after that it’s all hazy. I know I screamed, and I vaguely remember him slapping me.’

‘You were hysterical.’

‘I know – I just can’t remember why.’ She’s still shaky, and the teacup rattles in the saucer when she puts it down.

‘Well, you can’t go back to Ted, that’s for sure. He was in a right old tizzy when he rang me up. Said he was amazed he hadn’t had the police round, what with the racket you were making.’

Maggie sighs. ‘I don’t know what he must have thought of me.’

‘Ted’s a good man, not a crook like most of them,’ Vanda says, rummaging in her bag. She takes out an envelope and hands it to Maggie.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s your twenty-five guineas – he wouldn’t take a penny.’

And sure enough, the envelope contains all the notes and even the two half-crowns. Part of her doesn’t want to look at the money or think about it; it was intended as blood money, after all. Briefly, she’s tempted to tell Vanda to give it back to the doctor, but she knows that would be stupid. ‘Tell him . . . tell him thanks. And I’m sorry for . . . tell him I hope I haven’t caused him any trouble.’

Vanda nods. ‘I will. So,’ she lights her cigarette, then Maggie’s. ‘What now?’

‘I don’t know.’ Maggie sighs. ‘I suppose I’ll have to . . .’ Her stomach shifts at the enormity of it all. ‘I suppose I’ll have to have it, then have it adopted. Dr Sarka gave me some addresses – nursing homes, he said. But whatever happens, I can’t go through with an abortion.’

‘It would have been all right, you know, with Ted.’

Maggie nods. ‘I know. But I just can’t.’ She draws deeply on her cigarette. ‘Do you think Clive’ll sack me?’

‘Not until it shows, so you’ll be all right for a while. Those homes aren’t much fun from what I’ve heard.’

‘I know.’ Maggie sighs. ‘I knew a girl who was in one. The nuns made her clean the parquet floor with a toothbrush. Still, it’ll only be for a couple of months, I suppose.’

‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. You need somewhere to live, right? I’ve got a spare room – I used to have a lodger but since he went I haven’t bothered to look for anyone else – and I could do with some help with the rent. If I were to let you have it really cheap, perhaps you could do some bits and pieces for me when you can’t work any more – you know, cooking, cleaning, mending my costumes; that sort thing.’

Maggie is doubtful.

‘Go on,’ Vanda says. ‘It’ll help us both out and we’ll be company for one another. I get fed up only having Boris to talk to of an evening.’

Boris; she’d forgotten about Boris. ‘Where do you keep it?’

‘Come and meet him.’ Vanda grabs her hand and leads her upstairs into the little back bedroom, where a tank, more of an enclosure, really, stretches across the entire wall and almost to the ceiling. Inside is a large, coiled snake, asleep under one of the lamps. Its body, which is as thick as Maggie’s wrist, is chestnut brown with a rich pattern of greyish, diamond-shaped patches and deeper brown saddle shapes. The chestnut brown becomes brighter towards the tail, turning almost brick red. It is, Maggie has to admit, a handsome creature.

‘He’s a Columbian Red Tail. Very good-natured. He’s nearly twenty, so he’s getting on a bit. I’ve had him for sixteen years – bought him off an exotic dancer called Lola in Eastbourne just after the war.’

‘What were you doing in Eastbourne?’ Maggie doesn’t take her eyes from the snake. If it moves, she wants a head start out of the room.

‘That’s where I’m from. Well, near there anyway. My mum’s still there.’

‘I’m from Hastings.’