Tition: All About Fear t e w s

none the poorer for it. Just wiser. Would she not tell her own mother about a fright like that? What if I meet her again and I must pretend I don’t know? What if she won’t let me comfort her? What if she never understands that I was, I was right all along?

Or…or…what if that Eddie has done a runner with the money?

Half his fees paid. Not a bad deal for him. Or, he might have felt sorry for Hannah, told her about my plan, and split the money with her?

Are they laughing at me now? I try to shake off these thoughts. The night plays tricks on unsettled minds. Yet round and round my head they go like ball bearings in a dish. I pace.

The birds sing and the sun is well up and I’m still on my feet when the doorbell rings. The door is a source of anguish for me.

It’s where Hannah says goodbye and it’s to where she seldom returns. A ring at the bell is always bad news.

It’s a scammer or a bailiff, or it’s two police officers, because it’s always two, come to break the news. I don’t know what news, but something’s wrong because I haven’t heard from Hannah. I haven’t heard from Hannah.

The door again. I open it and there she is. I take a breath. I’m not dreaming. My Hannah, my baby is home.

IN TO the bath. Mam says that in the water I’m more like a mermaid than ever. She says I don’t need to tell her what’s wrong. I’ve come home and that’s enough, she says. I’m crying, I’m sobbing and she washes my back. I am so far from everything I thought I knew. London is another world. A nightmare I have managed to escape.

I look at her and I think, how can I tell her? How can I break her heart?

But the warm water, the safety and familiar fug of the bathroom, finally relax me and I calculate I have been solidly afraid for 12 hours.

“Mam, I couldn’t call you. I couldn’t tell you, but I was mugged.”

She stops for a moment, her face twisted with concern.

“Did he get anything? Are you hurt? Why didn’t you call?”

She grabs the sponge from the suds and hides her face behind it. I think she can’t bear it, the thought that something bad has finally happened. I pluck up the courage to tell her more. As I speak, the words become disembodied from me as though they are from a stranger’s mouth.

“Mam, he’s dead. He fell in the road and hit his head.”

This night Mam acts in a way I have never seen before. Before we go to bed, she is loving, so loving, but not really here. She’s away somewhere, in a kinder place perhaps, where strangers don’t hurt her or her daughter, in a time or place where the memories our bodies carry remain unmade.

IT’S MORNING already. I try to get Hannah to eat some breakfast. I plan to leave her in the house. I tell her I will get some food shopping, but really I will go to the police station and that’s where

I VISIT Hannah often. I count the days.

I ask her how she is, what she does with herself whether she’s been able to make any friends. Her hair is no longer blue.

It’s like all the colour has drained away from her, leaving her a pale version of that naïve, vulnerable young woman who moved to London.

I won’t say it’s always easy to chat. During the court case I learned more about her than I ever thought I would.

That she got angry that night and turned on her attacker.

That she was physically stronger than he was. That she beat him badly.

She stole his bag in revenge and ran off after leaving him for dead.

At least I’ve got her back. I make plans for her return home.

I tell her about them, but she’s very quiet.

It’s hard to get a word out of her sometimes. She doesn’t even make eye contact with me.

Until one visit, she says she’d rather write to me than see me and for a second I’m hurt.

I think it must show on my face. I’ve never been one for acting.

When the letter arrives, I am in the middle of measuring for new curtains for her room.

I scramble downstairs because I have been waiting for this day.

I open the envelope carefully because I expect to treasure this letter forever.

From it falls another slip of paper. It’s a bus ticket from Newcastle to Bellingham, not screwed in a ball any more, but pressed flat in the folded sheet.