Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Rosie Garland 2017

Rosie Garland asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Cover design by Micaela Alcaino © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008166137

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008166120

Version: 2018-02-12

Dedication

For Manchester

and all the wanderers who have found a home

in this Rainy City

Epigraph

All things must change to something new,

to something strange.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

Kéramos

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Manchester: August 1894

My night brother …

Part One: Manchester 1897–1904

Edie: 1897–1899

Gnome: 1899

Edie: 1900–1901

Gnome: 1901

Edie: 1901–1902

Gnome: 1902

Edie: 1902–4

Gnome: 1904

Part Two: Manchester 1909–1910

Edie: March 1909

Gnome: March 1909

Edie: March 1909

Gnome: March–June 1909

Edie: June–September 1909

Gnome: September 1909–January 1910

Edie: January 1910

Gnome: January 1910

Abigail

I am an …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Rosie Garland

About the Publisher

MANCHESTER AUGUST 1894

My night brother is here.

Halfway between yesterday and tomorrow morning, he shakes my shoulder.

‘I’m asleep, Gnome,’ I grunt. ‘Go away.’

I hug the blanket close. Sounds from the taproom steal through the floorboards: calls for mild and bitter, porter and stout; jokes and merriment to ease the day’s care and pour forgetfulness upon the toil to come. The tide of voices rolls back and forth and swells into shouting. This is brief and all contention settles into a rumbling burr, laced with the toffee scent of malt, breathed-out beer, wet coats and wetter dogs. A bedtime story that rocks me back to sleep.

‘“Boys and girls come out to play,”’ he sings. ‘Wake up.’

‘Don’t want to,’ I mumble.

He claps his hands and I taste the tremble of his anticipation.

‘Have you forgotten what’s happening tonight?’ he cries. ‘It’s Belle Vue fireworks!’

He yanks away the blanket and we begin our tug-of-war: me hanging on to one end, him the other. He wins. He always wins, for he bests me in strength as in everything else: bravery, brains, riot and loving kindness. The room swirls awake. One blink and I can make out the rectangle of the window. Two blinks, the door.

‘Shake a leg,’ he whispers.

I sit up and it sets off a yawn so wide it could swallow the mattress. He presses my lips together, shutting me up as tight as the bubbles in a crate of ginger beer.

‘Don’t give me that. You’re not tired.’

I am, but I save my breath. He always gets his own way.

‘We can’t go without asking Ma,’ I say.

‘She won’t miss us. What she doesn’t see won’t grieve her.’

‘But I’m not allowed out in the dark.’

‘I’ll get you back before it’s light.’

‘But she’ll see us come in.’

‘Then we’ll sneak through the window.’

‘But she’ll shout.’

‘She won’t.’

‘But—’

‘But but but! You don’t half whine, Edie. We’re going and that’s that.’

I yield to the press of his authority. For all my protestations I am thrilled. For two weeks I have been breathless with hoping Ma might take me to the firework show, the street having spoken of little else. Even Miss Pannett’s Sunday School voice brightened when she described last year’s extravaganza. Excitement tingles down my arms, into my legs. I leap from the bed.

‘Good,’ he grunts. ‘About time, silly girl.’

He speaks fondly and I am not hurt by the words. Ma says there’s no money to squander on toys. I have Gnome. Better than a hundred dolls. Wherever I go he holds my hand. I watch him lay the bolster along the mattress and arrange the blanket on top of it.

‘It doesn’t look anything like me.’

‘Who cares? It’s not like Mam is going to come in and kiss you goodnight, is it?’

‘She might,’ I protest, voice as empty as my wishes. If Ma looks in at all, it is a swift open and shut of the door after she’s cleared the bar at closing time.

‘And I’m the king of …’ Gnome mutters, fastening me into a pair of britches. He snaps braces over my shoulders to stop them falling down, for they are far too big.

‘Why have I got to wear trousers?’ I ask. ‘I’m not a boy.’

‘Hush your racket. It’s easier to climb out of windows, and no one will remark upon— Oh, I haven’t got time to explain, you little goose. We must go.’

He drags me towards the window.

‘Wait,’ I say.

‘No waiting.’

‘Wait!’ I grab a handful of marbles from under the pillow: each one a prize hoarded from the cracked throat of a lemonade bottle. I shove them into my pocket and hear the reassuring clink. ‘They’re lucky,’ I say.

He sighs. ‘Are you ready? We must go. Now.’

He rolls up the sash and hauls me on to the sill. I blink at the long climb down the drainpipe.

‘I’m afraid, Gnome.’

‘It’ll be worth it. Wait and see. Anyhow,’ he adds with a twist. ‘If there’s an ounce of trouble, it’ll be you that gets it in the neck. I’ll be long gone by the time Mam gets her hands on you.’

A familiar feeling swirls in my chest, sick and uncomfortable. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Stop asking daft questions and get down this damned pipe.’

I am silenced by the coarse word and obey. He shows me where to put my feet and fingers. My knees grind iron; rust stains my hands. We jump to the privy roof, which rattles beneath our feet, but holds steady. Then it’s only a short drop to the ground and we melt into the dark of the yard. Through the gate we scuttle, over the chipped cobbles of the back alley and on to the street.

Gnome gallops ahead full tilt, wind lifting his curls, whooping loud as Buffalo Bill and all his Indians. I tumble after, puffing and panting with the effort of keeping up. He laughs between my hurtling breaths.

‘You should come out and play more often, Edie,’ he teases. ‘It’ll build you up strong and healthy.’

‘I am going fast as I can, Gnome,’ I wheeze. ‘Ma says I should behave as befits a young lady.’

‘Mam says this, Mam says that. Mam says rot,’ he says dangerously, waiting for my shocked reaction. When it doesn’t come, he grins. ‘That’s more like it. Who cares what she thinks.’ He giggles. ‘I suppose you are doing well. For a girl.’

I pinch his skinny ribs and he squeals with laughter. We leap puddles dark as porter, hopscotch from lamplit pool to lamplit pool of light, my hand in his and his in mine. The faster I run, the easier it becomes. I flap my arms, imagining them wings. I could run forever.

Gnome sings the praises of Belle Vue. What a fairyland it is: more fantastical than any I could dream up in a month of Sundays. He spins stories of Maharajah the elephant, Consul the intelligent chimpanzee, the crocodiles with gnashing jaws, the pythons that can squeeze the life out of a man. I’d be frightened out of my wits if I were not so over the moon.

We are not alone in our exhilaration. The closer we draw to our destination the busier the streets. Hyde Road is so thick with wagons and omnibuses that not one of them can advance more than an inch at a time. We weave through the throng, Gnome guiding us with his skilful feet and eyes.

‘We’re here,’ he announces at last.

The entrance gate looms above our heads. Through its arch I spy an avenue lined with trees radiant with electric lights. It’s only as we stand there gawping that I remember there’s not so much as a halfpenny in my pocket. I grind the marbles and wish for a miracle.

‘Watch and learn,’ says Gnome and taps his nose.

He saunters across the road and I have little option but to follow, dodging carts and charabancs. We head for a roadside stall selling tea and fried potatoes. He slaps his grubby palms upon the counter.

‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ he chirps, and tugs the peak of his cap. ‘The chaps in the lion house have a fearsome thirst on them and have sent me to fetch their tea.’

‘Hah. Sharples again, is it?’ growls the stallholder, who is a veritable mountain of a man. ‘He’s a cheeky sod, sending a lad your age to do his work.’

‘I’m eight next birthday, sir!’ says Gnome, cheerfully.

‘Are you now?’ replies the man. He hefts an enormous steel teapot and pours steaming liquid into four mugs, each bigger than our milk jug at home. He thumps them on to a tin tray and shoves it across the counter. The mugs jiggle perilously. ‘Mind you don’t spill them!’

‘Not me, sir. Thank you, sir!’ Gnome cheeps.

‘Tell him he owes me sixpence!’ yells the tea-man as we carry the tray away.

Gnome strides to the front of the line, chin up. I try to close my ears to the complaints of cheeky lad, there’s a queue here you know and hug his side, close as his shirt. At the turnstile, a fellow in a dark blue uniform plants his hand in front of Gnome’s face and we teeter to a halt.

‘Watch it!’ cries Gnome. ‘I almost spilled this tea!’

The gatekeeper chews his moustache. ‘A shilling after five o’clock,’ he grunts.

‘And if I don’t get these to Mr Sharples at the lion enclosure in less than two minutes, he’ll take more than a shilling out of my arse,’ says Gnome, so loudly that the man behind us expels a cry of disgust.

‘Good Lord!’ exclaims the gent. ‘That’s hardly the sort of language ladies should hear.’ His wife and children cluster at his coat-tails, scowling.

The ticket inspector raises his hat. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry, sir! We offer our apologies that you have been so incommodicated. I do hope this won’t spoil your enjoyment of this evening’s entertainment.’

The gentleman is already bustling his brood forwards.

‘Far more interested in getting a good view of the fireworks than any real argument,’ murmurs Gnome in my ear.

The gatekeeper glares at us and jerks his thumb into the park. ‘Shift it, you little blighter. Now. And don’t think I won’t be having a word with Fred Ruddy Sharples about the class of lad he gets to do his fetching and carrying these days.’

‘Yes, sir!’ cries Gnome smartly. ‘I’ll be sure and let him know!’ We click through the turnstile and melt into the crowd. As soon as we are out of sight, Gnome plonks the tray on to the ground and passes me one of the mugs. ‘Go on. Get that down you. It’ll warm your cockles.’

The tea is strong, hot and deliciously sweet.

‘It’s the best thing I ever drank,’ I breathe.

‘That’s the ticket. Hits the very spot,’ says Gnome. He takes a slurp himself and lets out a satisfied belch.

‘You’re a marvel, Gnome,’ I say, in awe of my cunning brother. ‘I didn’t know a person could do anything half so sharp.’

‘Here’s the thing. If you act confidently, folk believe what they see and hear. Act nervous, like you don’t belong in a place, and you’ll stand out like a sore thumb.’

I take a long draught of tea. ‘I wish I were a boy, Gnome. I’d be as smart as you. And I wouldn’t have to stay at home with Ma and Nana.’

He shoots me a look. The light is not good, so it may be anger, it may be fear, it may be something else.

‘Don’t talk nonsense. You’re not dim, so don’t act it.’

‘I don’t mind being stupid. With you at my side, nothing can hurt me.’

‘You don’t know what’s around the corner,’ he sighs.

‘I do,’ I say. ‘You are.’

‘Oh, Edie,’ he says. ‘We can’t live this way forever.’ He lays a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. ‘We’re growing up. Jack and Jill have to come down the hill sooner or later.’ He heaves a sigh at my uncomprehending stare. ‘You don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, do you?’

I shake my head.

‘I don’t mean it nastily,’ he says, smiling again. ‘It’s just – ach. You’ll understand one day.’

He drains his mug and shoves it under a bush, tray and all.

‘Shouldn’t we take them—’

‘Shush. We’ll collect them later,’ he says.

I know he isn’t telling the truth. He doesn’t care for the cups now he has finished with them.

Gnome drags me past the animal enclosures and their rank scent of dung, meat and straw. I hear the grumblings of beasts who’ll get no sleep tonight. It is hardly like night-time. Everywhere we walk, lights banish the dusk. At the Monkey House, he bows his legs and hobbles from side to side, scratching his armpits, funnelling his lips and hooting. At the elephant house he swings his arm like a trunk, and trumpets; at the bear pit he growls; at the kangaroo house he hops. I can’t catch my breath for laughing.

‘Who needs the zoo when you have me?’ he says.

He pushes on and I scramble in his wake. If I lost him in this strange place it would be awful. I’d be lost forever.

‘Stop worrying, little sister. It’s not possible,’ he whispers, as though he has heard my thoughts.

I don’t know how he can murmur in my ear and yet still be bounding ahead, but I’m far too excited to give it much thought. Besides, he is Gnome and he can do anything. He pauses at a confectioner’s stand, produces a penny from his conjurer’s store and buys a bag of cinder toffee. As we scoff it, we press on towards the Firework Lake.

‘There won’t be anywhere left to sit at this rate,’ he grunts between mouthfuls. ‘It’s your fault for being so slow out of bed.’

‘I can’t go any faster.’ I feel the tight clumping of tears in my chest.

‘Don’t cry! Not when we’re so close.’ His voice is so desperate that it swipes aside my plunge into self-pity. How funny he sounds. He is never usually so nice. ‘I’ve always been nice to you, you ungrateful little brute,’ he grumbles, although I can tell that he is relieved. ‘Now, please let us hurry.’

A wooden scaffold has been constructed on the dancing platform, high as the Town Hall if not higher. Gnome tugs me underneath, into a jungle of posts and cross-beams. He slips between them as nimbly as one of the apes he so recently imitated, starts to climb and I clamber after, up the ranks of seats until he is satisfied with our vantage point. We squeeze through the thicket of skirts and trousers.

‘I say!’ exclaims a chap as we struggle between the legs of his brown-and-yellow tweed britches. ‘Whatever are you doing down there!’

Gnome tips his cap. ‘Bless you, sir!’ he cries. ‘Thought I was going to get squashed flat!’ I pause to curtsey my thanks but he drags me down the walkway. ‘He smelled of mothballs,’ he hisses, and I giggle.

At the end of the bench are a spooning couple.

Gnome smiles angelically. In his politest voice he says, ‘If you’d be so kind,’ and they shuffle aside. There’s only the tiniest squeeze of a space but we manage to fit somehow.

‘You’re getting fat. What’s Mam feeding you, bricks?’

We laugh. No one ticks us off for making a noise. Indeed, we can hardly be heard over the commotion: shuffling of feet, rustling of petticoats, crunching of pork scratchings and gossiping about how grand the display was last time and how it can’t possibly be as good tonight. I’m so a-jangle I’m going to burst.

‘Stop wriggling,’ he snaps. ‘If you don’t calm down I’ll shove you under the bench and you’ll see nothing.’

I am shocked into stone by the awful threat. My lip wobbles. ‘For goodness’ sake,’ he sighs. ‘I don’t mean it. Shush. The show is about to start.’

Expectation ripples through the both of us. A trumpet blares and a hundred suns shine forth, illuminating a new world. There is a gasp from the entire company. Even Gnome lets out a whistle. Cries of wonder rumble in my ears: Huzzah! Bravo! Best ever! Heels stamp, so thunderous the planks shake. Before us stretches a strange city towering with castles, parapets and battlements. Not Manchester, but a fairyland better and brighter than any of the stories told by Nana when Ma spares her to sit with me.

‘What’s happening?’ I whisper. ‘Where are we?’ I shrink into Gnome and he laughs.

‘We’re in Belle Vue!’

‘We can’t be. Look! When did they build all of that?’

‘Build all of what?’ says Gnome.

‘The castles.’

‘It’s a painting.’ He sniggers. ‘A new one every year and this is the best yet. You are a dimwit.’

Now that I look more carefully I can see it is a canvas banner: taller than two houses one on top of the other, longer than our street and riotous with colour. I gawp open-mouthed, bursting with gratitude that Gnome did not leave me at home.

‘As if I could,’ he says gently. ‘Anyway. Shut your trap. There’s a train coming.’

There’s a general shushing as a gaggle of men in scarlet uniforms charge across the platform, bayonets glinting in the torchlight. I can pick out the noble hero by his flamboyant gestures and clutching of his breast. His mouth opens. The wind is rather in the wrong direction, and I only catch the words spirit and devour, but no one minds terribly much and we applaud his brave speech all the same.

Cannons roar; mortars boom. Beams of electrical light fly back and forth, sharp as spears. Two vast ships heave into view, one from the right and one from the left. We cheer our jolly tars and boo the enemy, who are dressed as Turks. Their ship shatters like matchwood at the first assault and they pitch into the lake, yowling like cats. I watch them struggle to the shore and squelch up the bank, shivering. They’ll catch a chill and Lord knows what else from that mucky water.

‘Don’t worry,’ says Gnome. ‘They have sandwiches waiting.’

‘Is this the Relief of Mafeking or the Battle of the Nile?’ asks the lady beside us.

‘Who cares?’ says her companion, tugging his side-whiskers with gusto. ‘It’s a right good show, that’s what it is.’ He sweeps off his hat and waves it around his head. ‘Blow ’em to kingdom come!’ he cries.

The crowd shriek like demons and the fireworks answer in hellish agreement. The night sky of Manchester is wallpapered with flame. Spinning cartwheels roll on roads of fire and set the lake ablaze. I spy serpents and stars, Catherine wheels and Roman fountains. Rockets burst and bloom like flowers hurled into the heavens and rain down silver dust.

I look around. Lit by the flicker of firecrackers we have been transformed into demons: eye sockets pierced deep as death’s heads, black flared nostrils, teeth bared in rictus grins. The lady to our right moans and groans like a cow trying to give birth, or at least that’s what Gnome whispers in my ear. I titter at his naughty joke. No one hears my little scrap of laughter over the din. No one wags their finger and tells me to be a good girl. The realisation of such delicious liberty occurs to us both at the same time. Gnome’s eyes glitter, teeth sharp as a knife.

‘Come on. Make a racket.’

‘I can’t.’ He grabs the skin of my arm and twists. ‘Ow!’ I squeak. My skin burns as though he’s stubbed out a cigar. ‘Stop it, Gnome.’

‘Not till you scream. No one can hear you.’

In agreement, a barricade of bangers is let off. My stomach pitches and rolls.

‘Aah!’ I try, hard as I can. All that comes out is a feeble mewing.

‘Do you want me to pinch you black and blue?’ Gnome growls.

‘Aah!’ I cry, a bit louder.

‘More. Still can’t hear you.’

I am struck by the realisation that tonight will never come again. I will not be able to claw back so much as one second.

‘That’s right,’ says Gnome. ‘Drink every drop. Live every minute. Yell!’

My voice breaks out of my throat. ‘Aaaah!’

‘Yes! Open your cake-hole and let rip!’

I stretch my lips wide and shriek. Gnome joins in and together, our shouts punch holes in the clouds and soar to the stars.

‘Oh!’ he cries. ‘Wouldn’t it be grand to grab the tail of a rocket and fly all the way to the moon and live there and never come back?’

I think of my warm bed, the comforting arms of my grandmother, kind-hearted Uncle Arthur on his monthly visits. The thought of losing them makes my heart slide sideways.

‘Isn’t the moon awfully cold?’ I say nervously.

‘Not a bit. Don’t you ache to spread your wings?’

‘Do I have to?’

He waggles his hands in frustration. ‘Don’t you ache to be free?’

‘Free of what?’

‘Just once, I wish you weren’t such a stick-in-the-mud, Edie. I’m never able to do what I want. Always chained to you, shackled like a prisoner—’

The barrage of words finds its target and stings.

‘Oh,’ I say.

He frowns. ‘Dash it all, Edie, I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t take on so.’ But he does mean it, exactly like that. ‘Forget I spoke. I should hold my tongue.’

He makes amends by sticking out his tongue and pinching it tight. I try to smile, but it is not easy. I don’t understand how he can say such a cruel thing. I never demand that he come and play with me. I never force him to stay. If he finds me so tiresome, I don’t know why he insists on my company. It is confusing.

Gnome piggy-backs me home. He does not grumble, not once.

‘I thought you said I was as heavy as a hod of bricks,’ I mumble.

‘So you are. But I am strong as a bricklayer.’

I squeeze him so tight we can’t breathe. ‘Don’t leave me, Gnome. Not ever.’

He doesn’t answer; too busy hoisting me on to the roof of the outhouse, up the pipe and through the window. We tumble through, tickling each other and rolling on the floor like puppies.

‘Get into bed,’ chides Gnome, herding me towards the cot he hauled me out of such a short time before. ‘It’ll be light soon.’

I skip across the floor, ears buzzing, fingertips shooting sparks as though I’ve brought the fireworks home. ‘No it won’t.’

‘It’s usually you who is the sensible one.’ He tries to be stern, but I can hear glee at the back of his words.

‘How can I sleep after such an adventure? It is quite impossible.’

‘No, you are quite impossible. Hurry up. Get out of these britches,’ he says, fumbling with the buttons. I try to help but I’m all fingers and thumbs. ‘Leave off,’ he cries. ‘I’ll be quicker.’

He wrestles with the fly and wins. The trousers fall to my ankles. I take a step, trip and fall flat upon the mattress. Marbles scatter across the rug. He seizes his opportunity, pins me down and endeavours to drag the shirt over my head.

‘We’ve got to fold the trousers and put them away tidily,’ I mumble.

‘No time,’ he says with an odd urgency. He sounds an awfully long way off, as if he has turned into a gnat and is whining in my ear. I flap my hand but it is stuck half in and half out of the shirt. ‘Stay still,’ he says, so grave and unlike his usual self I can’t help tittering.

All my clothes are off. The blanket is scratchy, coarse.

‘Tell me a bedtime story, Gnome,’ I say, halfway gone.

Breath close to my ear, hot and stifling. He folds his hand in mine. My hand in his. I think of Nana folding butter into flour. I flutter my fingers and hear Gnome giggle.

‘That tickles.’

Perhaps I say it. Perhaps it is Gnome. I’m so sleepy I’m no longer sure where he ends and I begin. Nor does it matter: I have never known such bliss and I know he feels it also. I know everything he has ever known, feel everything he has ever felt. It is so simple. I did not realise—

The door flies open. Ma stands against the light, her candle shivering the walls with shadow.

‘Come now, Edie,’ she says. ‘What’s all this noise?’

‘Ma!’ I cheer, still fizzing with excitement. I reach for her to gather me into her arms.

‘Why aren’t you asleep?’ She plonks down the candle, marches across the room and closes the window.

Shh, hisses Gnome. Don’t tell.

The space between my ears is spinning with red and yellow lights; rockets are bouncing off the walls of my ribs. I can’t help myself.

‘I’ve been to the fireworks!’ I crow. ‘It was wonderf—’

‘You naughty girl!’ she exclaims, pushing aside my grasping hands. ‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. You’re too little to step out on your own.’

‘I didn’t. Gnome held my hand.’

Don’t say my name! says Gnome. Not to her.

‘What?’ Ma swallows so heavily I see the muscles in her neck clump together. ‘Who …?’

‘I told Gnome you’d be cross, but he wouldn’t listen …’

‘Gnome?’ she gulps. ‘No.’

Her eyes stretch so wide they look like they might pop out of her head. I hold my hand over my mouth to push the giggle back in.

That’s torn it, says Gnome.

‘No. No. No,’ she mutters, over and over, shaking her head from side to side. ‘I’ll not have it. There’s no such person.’

‘There is! He’s here every night.’

I don’t know why Ma is being so silly. The candle flame wobbles. Her expression twists from disbelief to belief, belief to shame, shame to fear, fear to anger. She slaps the back of my legs. Not hard, but it stings.

‘Ow! Ma, you’re hurting.’

‘Serves you right for telling lies.’

‘I’m not. Gnome!’ I cry. ‘Come back and tell Ma!’

I can’t see him. Maybe he’s hiding under the bed. But Gnome doesn’t need to hide. He’s not afraid of anyone.

‘Shut up!’ Ma cuffs the side of my head. My ears whistle. ‘He’s not real. He can’t be! When are you going to get it through that thick skull of yours?’

I shrink into the bed as far as I can, curl against the wall. There is no further I can go. I don’t know why Ma is so furious. She is strict, but not like this: wild, white-faced. I want the mattress to open its mouth and gobble me up.

‘It was all Gnome’s idea!’ I squeal. ‘He made me go with him!’

It’s a terrible lie. The air freezes, pushing ice so far down my throat I can’t breathe. Ma seizes my shoulders and shakes me.

‘He’s not real! Say it!’

‘No!’ I wail.

‘Say it!’ she roars.

My head jerks back and forth, my neck as brittle as a bit of straw.

‘Say it!’

Roaring in my ears. Dark, sucking.

‘He’s not real,’ I moan.

‘Louder!’

‘He’s not real!’ I whimper, the thin squeal of a doll with a voice box in its chest.

‘What’s all this to-do?’ booms Nana. She can barely fit into the tiny room beside Ma, but fit she does. She throws a quick glance the length of my body and turns to Ma. ‘Well, Cissy?’

Ma’s face contorts. ‘Lies. Nightmares,’ she spits. ‘She says she’s been to the fireworks. With – no. No! Her and her wretched imaginings. It’s enough to try the patience of a saint.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ says Nana pertly. She lowers herself on to the mattress and huffs a sigh that matches the springs in weary music. She pats the blanket. ‘Come here, Edie.’

I shake my head the smallest fraction and cling to the bedstead.

‘No one is going to punish you.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ growls Ma.

‘Pipe down,’ snaps Nana, throwing her a glance that could burn toast. ‘Now then, Edie,’ she says very carefully. ‘Why aren’t you in your nightdress? You’ve not a stitch on.’

I shake my head again. It seems to be the only thing of which I am capable.

‘Filthy little heathen,’ says Ma.

Nana continues in her soft burr, coaxing me out of my funk. ‘You’ll catch your death. Here.’ She plucks my nightdress out of thin air, or so it seems to my fuddled brain. I clutch it to my chest. ‘I think we could all do with some sleep,’ she adds.

I nod. My head bounces, broken and empty. Nana turns to Ma and frowns.

‘Look at her. She doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going. Be gentle with her. As I was with you.’

‘Since when did any of that nonsense do any good? She’s tapped. I’ll have her taken away, I will.’

‘Hush. You’ll do no such thing. You’re frightening the child. If you let her play out rather than keeping her cooped up, she wouldn’t need to make up stories.’

‘Who cares about her? What about my nerves?’

Nana ignores her and returns her attention to me. ‘You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Edie love?’

‘Yes?’ I say uncertainly.

‘So you haven’t really been to the fireworks, have you?’

Ma glares over Nana’s shoulder, eyes threatening dire punishment. I am afraid of lying, terrified of the truth. My heart gallops like a stampede of coal horses.

‘No,’ I squeak.

Ma smirks; Nana does not. I have satisfied one and not the other. I have no idea how to please them both.

‘Was it a nightmare, Edie?’ Nana purrs.

I can tell the truth, if that’s what she wants. But I no longer know what anyone wants. ‘Yes,’ I lie.

‘Well, then,’ she says. ‘You were dreaming. That’s all.’

Ma storms out of the room, grumbling about my disobedience. Nana pauses, screws up her eyes until they are slits. I have the oddest notion she’s trying to see through me and find Gnome. She leans close.

‘Herbert?’ she whispers.

‘Shh,’ I hiss. ‘He hates that name.’ She gives me a startled glance. ‘I’m sorry, Nana. I didn’t mean to be rude. But he likes to be called Gnome.’

She looks over her shoulder, as though worried Ma is watching. I did not think grandmothers were afraid of their own children.

‘Quiet now,’ she murmurs. She kisses my brow. ‘Let’s have no more of this talk. Not in front of your mother. You can see how it riles her.’

‘But he’s my brother.’

‘No, he’s not.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘I can’t explain. You’re too little. One day. Just don’t say his name again. A quiet life. That’s what we all want.’

‘Can we run away, Nana?’

‘Hush, my pet. Do you want your ma to come back in here?’

She pinches my cheek. It is affectionate, but her eyes are desperate. She slides away, taking the light of the candle with her. I lie in a darkness greater than the absence of flame. I’m afraid. If Nana is too, there’s nowhere I can turn. Through the wall I hear them argue, voices muffled by brick.

‘This wasn’t supposed to happen,’ wails Ma. ‘She’s ruined everything.’

‘She’s ruined nothing. She’s the same as you and me, that’s all.’

‘That’s all? I raised her to be normal.’

‘Cissy, for goodness’ sake …’

‘It can’t be true. I won’t let it be.’

‘You can’t alter facts. We are what we are,’ says Nana, over and over. ‘We are what we are.’

I smell home in all its familiarity: a stew of spilt beer, pipe smoke and damp sawdust. And something else: my hair, reeking of gunpowder. I crawl out of bed. Underneath is a pair of britches, ghostly with warmth from the body that wore them. Beside them are my boots, mud clumped under the heel. I press my finger to it: fresh, damp. Ma says I was lying. Nana says I was dreaming. If I didn’t go out, I must be imagining this as well.

I tiptoe to the window. I can’t be sure if I opened it or not. I peer through the glass. I would never be brave enough to climb down the drainpipe, not in a hundred years. My thoughts stumble, stop in their tracks.

‘Where are you, Gnome?’ I sob. ‘I need you.’

However many times Ma’s told me off, I’ve always been able to find his hand in the dark and hang on. He’s always been there. But tonight, there’s no answer. Something emptier than silence.

I try to make sense of the senseless. Ma says Gnome is all in my head – a nightmare. Nana says he isn’t my brother, that he is imaginary. They would not lie to me. Grown-ups are always right. I am the one who is wrong. I am a naughty girl. I tell lies. I make things up.

I must have been asleep. I must have dreamed the whole thing. I will be a good girl. I will scrape his name from the slate of my memory. If I say what Ma wants then it will be the truth and she will be happy. She won’t be cross any more.

I double over in agony, as though I have been split in half and my heart torn out. I squeeze my nightdress, expecting to find it soaked with blood. All is dry. In the faint light I examine my chest, searching for wounds. My skin is whole, undamaged. I am just a girl, on my own.

I throw the marbles out of the window; hear them click as they roll down the privy roof, and the fainter thud as they fall into the dirt. There is no such thing as luck.

‘Gnome?’ I say his name for the last time.

The sound echoes off the ceiling. I have lost him. I do not know how to get him back. If he was ever here. For the first time in my life, I am alone.

PART ONE
MANCHESTER 1897–1904

EDIE
1897–1899

Stroll through Hulme of an evening and you will be forgiven for imagining it a den of drunkards. Brave the labyrinth of streets, row upon row of brick-built dwellings black as burned toast, and there, upon each and every corner, you will find it: haven for the weary traveller, fountain for the thirsty man – the beerhouse.

Hulme boasts a hundred of them; a hundred more besides. There’s the Dolphin, famed for its operatic landlord; the Duke of Brunswick with a ship’s bell clanged at closing time; the Hussar and its sword swiped at Peterloo. If you can ignore their glittering siren song and press on, only then will you find us, breasting the tip of Renshaw Street like a light-ship.

The Comet.

Sparkling Ales is etched upon one frosted window, Fine Stouts and Porter upon the other. A board stretches the width of our wall, announcing Empress Mild and Bitter Beer. Above the door and brightest of all, the gilt scroll of my mother’s name: Cecily Margaret Latchford, Licensed to sell Beers and Stouts. Come, it beckons. Enter, and be refreshed.

That is the full extent of our finery and flash. We are no glaring gin-palace for we boast neither piano room, spirit licence, nor free-and-easy on a Saturday night; we field no darts team, no skittle alley, no billiard table. You’d be forgiven for thinking us a temperance hall on account of the sober principles Ma polishes into the long oaken bar. We are so plain I scarcely understand why The Comet is full each evening; lunchtime too.

They said we’d not make a farthing, but Ma is forged of steely stuff and has proved them wrong. She gives neither short measure nor employs the long pull. A pint is a pint to the very drop. She never raises her voice, nor needs to. At closing time she glares at the clock. That’s all it takes for every glass in the room to be raised, every mouthful drained. By ten past the hour she slides the door-bolts into place and turns down the gas, with not so much as the shadow of a dog remaining under the tables.

For all that Ma will have no truck with nonsense, the walls of The Comet bulge with mysteries. Some are simple to plumb. Ma refuses to speak about Papa, a moustachioed fellow who hangs above the bar in a picture frame, only pointing to the black riband looped around the corner. That, I understand. Some things are less easy to explain: why Ma takes to her bed three days in every month; why my beloved Uncle Arthur only drops by when she’s laid up.

Then there are my nightmares. I can’t understand why people talk of sleep as a welcome undoing of strife and woe. They must mean something else entirely. I am hag-ridden. I tell no one of the night-voice that shrieks so piercingly the whole street ought to hear. I dare not. I tell no one how I wake with fingernails grimed as black as soot, knots in my hair and scraps of bacon rind wedged in my teeth. I dare not.

The only person with whom I share my stories is Papa, behind his glass. Sometimes I wish he’d speak one word, give one nod of encouragement, but his face is stiff. He keeps my secrets well.

At school, I hunger for mathematics and its security of two-times-two-equals-four; prefer geography and the massive consistency of mountains. Even the most determined friend despairs of my inability to engage in games of make-believe and I am left to the click of my abacus. What they cannot know is that I cling to logic with the dogged desperation of one drowning. I strive to make Ma smile.

Every night she stares as I undress, as though searching for something she does not want to find. I wonder if the removal of my petticoat will reveal me to be a bat, ready to squeak and burst out of the window.

‘Don’t you stir,’ she says.

‘No, Ma.’

‘You stay right there.’

‘Yes, Ma.’

She sits on the bed, stands up, sits again. It makes me dizzier than physick. At last, she leans close and I thrill that tonight she may kiss me.

‘I know you,’ she whispers, the words crawling into my ear. ‘You’re waiting for me to look away for one minute, aren’t you?’

‘No, Ma,’ I say.

‘Liar,’ she replies, exhaling heat upon my face. ‘I know what you’re thinking. Everything. Before you think it. I know you better than you know yourself.’

‘Ma?’ I don’t understand. I never do.

‘You can’t fool me. Don’t try,’ she hisses.

‘I won’t,’ I promise desperately. I close my eyes. Green lights dance behind my eyelids. The next time she speaks it is from further away.

‘I am watching. Always.’

‘Yes, Ma. Goodnight, Ma,’ I mumble as drowsily as I can manage.

The door clicks shut. I shake my head from side to side, but her words stick fast and refuse to tumble out on to the pillow. I climb out of bed, kneel under the picture of Jesus and Mary and press my palms together. I beg them to send me to sleep and not wander in wild dreams. They look down at me with sad expressions, pointing at their fiery hearts, eyes reproachful. Their insides are burning too, but they don’t complain. Not like me.

From below come the sounds of The Comet: clink of glass, rumble of voices, the percussion of Ma’s footsteps drumming back and forth. I stare at the ceiling until my eyes grow used to the dark. Tonight, perhaps, I will be spared.

It begins small, as always, like a dray rumbling over cobbles three streets distant. Street by street the thunder draws closer, gathering speed and vigour. I clap my hands over my ears to stave off the din, but the commotion is from inside, not out. The shadows thicken and in their depths I spy the glint of monstrous eyes, the flash of leviathan teeth, ready to devour me.

Edie. I’m here, roars the fiend. Let’s go out to play.

‘No!’ I howl, but the wail is trapped within the confines of my head. ‘I can’t hear you! I won’t!’

I strain to get away. If I can stir so much as my little finger, I will win and the beast will be vanquished. But all that is Edie has shrunk into a marble, tiny and lost.

You used to be so much more fun. Don’t you remember the fireworks?

‘No.’ It is a lie and I weep with the wickedness of telling it.

I can’t waste time chatting. Time presses. Let me in.

I fight to stay awake. The creature surges forwards, opens its jaws. Claws drag me into darkness and I do not rise again.

The next morning I wake with a fog of unknowing between my ears. My first thought is: Where am I? The second: Who am I? Gradually, the room resumes its familiar shape. This is home and I am in it. I lie abed, half-breathless from last night’s dream of bruised knees, slammed doors, thumped door-knockers and racing away. The curtain sways. The window stands half-open. Last night Ma closed it tight.

My hair is sticky with spiders’ web and I’m wearing muddy boots and britches. I daren’t let Ma see me like this. Before I go downstairs, I clean the boots and take the scrubbing brush to my hands. I stand before the mirror at the top of the stairs and rehearse my smile in preparation for breakfast. My face looks back, pallid and starved of sleep.

‘Did you sleep well?’ Ma asks as I pull my chair to the kitchen table.

‘Yes, Ma,’ I lisp and stretch my deceitful grin to the tips of my ears.

I am shepherding the last bit of porridge from bowl to mouth when Nana lays her hand on my forehead.

‘You look a bit peaky,’ she says.

I butt into the broad warmth of her palm. Half the porridge slips from the spoon back into the bowl. Her tenderness is my undoing.

‘Yes, Nana.’ I yawn. ‘It was that dream again: where I jump out of the window and get into all sorts of naughtiness.’

Her hand makes peaceful circles across my brow. My eyelids droop.

‘Dreams,’ she murmurs, half-statement, half-question.

I am more than halfway back to sleep. ‘I never know why I wake up with dirty hands and feet.’ The delicious massage ceases abruptly. ‘Nana?’ I mumble.

I winch open my eyelids to see Ma shooting my grandmother a look of such blazing fury I am surprised she does not incinerate on the spot.

‘Cissy,’ says my grandmother in a soothing tone. ‘It’s only right. Let me tell—’

‘Not a word,’ rasps Ma, shaking her head. ‘Unless you wish to look for alternate lodgings.’

‘Cissy! I am your mother!’

‘And as long as it is my name upon the licence, you will abide by my rules. Remember who does everything around here. Everything!’

My spoon hovers between dish and lips. What species of imp prompts the next words I do not know.

‘Uncle Arthur,’ I pipe.

‘What?’ growls Ma, her eyes wide as saucers.

‘He helps.’

She lets loose a cry that could split firewood. ‘He does nothing, do you hear?’ she screams. ‘I work my fingers to the bone and he swans in once a month!’

I bow my head and let the storm rage. I think her ungrateful, but I’ll never be the one to say so. Uncle Arthur is a pearl of a man. Without him, who knows how we’d manage when Ma takes to her bed, regular and reliable as the full moon.

Life continues on its confusing path.

I grow into a swallowed voice of a girl. I speak when I am spoken to and often not even then. Ma says sufficient for the two of us, sharp as thistles and as bitter. I gulp down my words before they are born and they wedge in my throat like stones. If I lay my hand on my chest I feel them grinding together, locked up tight.

As soon as I’m old enough to stand without hanging on to the furniture Ma has me collecting glasses and washing them too, for she scorns the idea of squandering cash on a servant. I learn quick not to break one, having no desire to increase the number of times she takes out her wrath on my backside.

Year follows year until I reach my twelfth birthday. It is a proud day indeed, for I carry a jug of beer from the cellar without spilling a drop. It makes Ma happy. And when Ma is happy, well, so is everybody else.

Our customers have their little ways. There’s the temperance man who disappears for a fortnight at a time, only to reappear with a famished look, ready to spring to the defence of his porter at closing time. There’s Old Tom, who takes the same seat by the fire and woe betide anyone who tries to purloin it. There are the pipe-smokers, teeth stained brown as the benches they sit upon. There’s the bearded fellow, white stripes running from the corners of his mouth and lending him the appearance of a badger.

And there’s the charming man.

The hair on his head is black, but his eyebrows and moustache are copper-red, adding a streak of spice to his features. I find it difficult to like a man whose head disagrees with his face. Whenever I pass through the bar on one errand or another, he grabs me around the waist and pulls me close, squeezing out what little breath I have to spare. Every time he does so Ma ticks me off.

‘Stop annoying the customers,’ she growls.

‘She’s not bothering me,’ he replies.

One evening, after a particularly onerous spell of cuddles and pinches, I retreat to the privy. The night-soil collectors emptied the bucket the previous evening but it retains the fruity stink of human ordure. I consider the smell preferable to his unwanted attentions. There is no point in wasting a visit, so I hitch my skirt around my middle.

I hear a light cough, more of an apology.

The ginger-faced man slides into the doorway and hovers there. I stretch out my hand to pull the door shut, but he braces his foot against it.

‘I’ll make sure no ill befalls you,’ he says in his soft, polite way.

I want to tell him to turn around and leave, but something in the way he speaks smothers my protestations. I have the sensation of a pillow stuffed with goose down being held tenderly over my face.

I tug my skirt over my knees. It is tricky to keep my balance at the same time as preventing the hem from trailing in muck. My insides shrivel. I cannot go while he is watching. I pull up my drawers as modestly as I am able.

‘I didn’t hear you tinkle,’ he says, the loveliest of smiles lighting up his face.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I whisper. ‘I don’t need to.’

‘Oh, but you do,’ he purrs. He doesn’t shift aside to let me pass, nor does he lift his protective gaze from me for one instant.

‘I can’t.’

‘But you must.’ His voice is as sticky as barley malt. ‘Ah!’ he breathes. ‘You’re afraid someone will barge in, aren’t you? I’ll tell you what. Let your old friend help you. I’ll fight off any rough fellows who come this way.’

I can neither move nor speak.

He waggles his fingers, fanning the sickly air. ‘I’ll be your lookout. Carry on.’

A cry for help twists my innards. ‘No.’ It is less than a squeak. Barely an exhalation.

‘Do it,’ he says, a fraction sharper. ‘Now.’

I sit down so quickly I crack my tailbone on the seat. I watch him turn very slowly until he takes position with arms folded, gazing towards the beerhouse door. I raise my petticoats, lower my bloomers. My body clenches. I tuck my chin into my chest and stare at the ground between my knees in the hope that I can block him out. I know he’ll not release me until he is satisfied.

Whether it is my prayer or merely an urgent need to pass water, but liquid splashes into the bucket. I didn’t know it is possible to feel such relief. It gushes on and on as though it’ll never stop. I tear a scrap of paper from the string, wipe myself and rearrange my clothing. When I raise my head, he is staring right at me, beatific grin in place.

‘That’s better, isn’t it? I took care of you, didn’t I?’

I do not reply.

He stretches out a hand. ‘Here, little miss. Ups-a-daisy. Don’t want you falling in, do we now?’ he says sweetly.

I struggle to my feet without the aid of his proffered hand. He chuckles at my refusal of help, shoves his fists into his pockets and saunters back to the bar, whistling. I trudge behind. I could have shouted for help. I could have screamed, You lied! You looked! A single word would have broken the spell. I stayed silent. I’m not sure why. What I am sure of is that this must be my fault.

It is impossible to speculate how long I might have continued in this muddled state.

Two weeks later, I traipse downstairs at breakfast-time to discover that Ma has retreated to her room, bedridden by her fearsome and unexplained women’s ailments. At school, I daydream that luck will smile; that Arthur will come through the door at the very moment Ma is shouting at me. I picture him stepping into the fray and calming her wrath. She’ll listen to her brother; she has to. She’ll lay her head upon his shoulder and promise she’ll never be angry, never again.

The moment the bell rings I race home. As soon as I open the door I know he is there. Some pleasurable tickle in the air betrays his presence. I dash into the kitchen and am swept into his arms.

‘Princess!’ he roars.

‘Was ever a mother so blessed,’ says Nana.

In feature and bearing Uncle Arthur and Ma are more alike than two bottles of beer set one next to the other. My mind supplies the unkind observation that one is bitter, one mild. I thrust the thought aside hastily.

‘How about a stroll to pick blackberries?’ says Arthur, kissing me till I giggle. ‘If that doesn’t strike you as the most boring idea in the world.’

‘Never,’ I gasp.

The waste ground between the tracks and the canal seethes with brambles.

‘Keep an eye out for trains, eh?’ he says. ‘Let’s get you home with both legs attached.’

We wave to the folk as they rattle past. Those in third class wave back. The grand folk in first class do not.

‘They can sneer all they want,’ says Uncle. ‘They’re not having blackberry pie for their supper.’

The first few berries explode under my fierce fingers.

‘Pick them, don’t throttle them,’ he advises. ‘They’re not your enemy.’

After a while I manage better and show off the tin proudly for inspection. He nods approval each time. The berries tantalise me deeper into the bush, the next always better than the last: bigger, juicier, each drupelet as inviting as liquorice. My mouth waters.

‘Can I eat any?’ I ask shyly.

‘Of course you can. Go for the ones that burst when you touch them. They’ll go off before we can get them through the front door. But they’re fine to eat now. How’s that for a plan?’

We beam at each other. Brambles brush my face and snag my pinafore. I yelp as I prick myself. He takes my hand to inspect the thorn.

‘Close your teeth around the tip. Don’t bite or it’ll snap and you’ll never get the blighter out.’

I do as instructed. It is like kissing my finger.

‘Now, spit.’

Simple as that, it is gone.

I study my palm. ‘It’s not even bleeding.’

He smiles. ‘They don’t go deep. Only a problem if you leave them and they fester.’

Even with the handfuls I stuff into my mouth, the tin fills with remarkable alacrity.

‘Done already?’ asks Uncle, peering at my hoard. ‘Let’s be getting off, then.’

‘We don’t have to,’ I say, stabbed with disappointment. ‘There are thousands. Look, I can carry them in my apron.’

‘They’ll stain. Blackberry juice is the very devil to get out. Don’t make work for your ma.’

We pick our way up the siding. In my mind’s eye, Ma sits up in bed, remarking how much better she feels. Even though the sun beats down on my head, clouds may as well have pulled a curtain across the sky. I clutch Arthur’s hand.

‘Who’ll make the pie?’ I whisper. ‘You or Ma?’

‘You’re stuck with me tonight, Edie,’ he says. ‘Though I’m sure your ma makes better pastry.’

‘Mm,’ I murmur, spilling some of the berries. They tumble across the pavement like soft marbles. ‘They’re dirty!’ I sob.

Uncle kneels and begins to pick them up. ‘Nothing a rinse under the tap won’t sort out.’

‘It’s your fault!’ I wail, far more upset than I should be.

‘Ah well,’ he says mildly.

He returns the rescued fruit to my tin. The kitchen is empty on our return and my spirits rally. Uncle gets started on the pastry, rolling a sheet so vast it swamps the dish. I glance at the door, afraid that Ma may clump into the kitchen and knock him out of the way. The afternoon ticks away. When the pie is slumbering in the oven, he sits beside the range and fills his pipe.

‘You keep looking at the clock, Edie.’

‘Do I?’

He pulls me close. ‘My little pickle. I could gobble you right up.’ He nuzzles my neck, presses his eye to my cheek and flutters the lashes. ‘Here come the butterflies!’

‘Don’t! No!’ I squeal.

He draws away. ‘Want me to stop?’

‘Never.’

I make a special effort to smile, which eases some of the clutching of my heart. He pats his knee.

‘How about a story?’ he asks.

‘It’s not bedtime.’

‘Who knows what’ll be afoot by then.’

I clamber on to his lap and cling to his arm, solid as oak beneath the shirtsleeve. ‘A story, please. Yes. Now,’ I gabble.

As he reads, I run my finger across his stubbled chin, revelling in his perfume of tobacco and fresh sweat. He smiles and on an impulse I throw my arms around his neck and squeeze.

‘Careful, child,’ he says. ‘I can hardly breathe.’

‘Yes you can,’ I say. ‘You’re as strong as a bear. You can take any amount of hugging.’

I burrow into the broad sweep of his chest and imagine a home where he lives all of the time. A home where his shirt warms next to the hearth and a pipe of tobacco stands by. My throat tightens. Each mouthful of air has to negotiate its way past a stone lodged there.

‘Uncle.’ I press my ear to the slow thump of his heart. ‘Don’t go,’ I say, whispering the disloyal words. ‘I wish you were my pa.’

If he hears, he shows no sign. The weight of his hand alights on the crown of my head and warmth seeps into my scalp, as though a night-cap has been laid there. ‘Shush now, my pet,’ he purrs.

Very gently, unnoticeably to begin with, he rocks backwards and forwards, cradling me in the safe sweep of his arm. It is a feather-light embrace, more precious than all the shillings in the till on a Saturday night. I steel myself not to cry. I am a grown-up girl. Besides, if I begin, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.

‘Don’t worry, Uncle,’ I breathe, and manage to make the words sound level. ‘I’m happy.’

It is not a lie. I am happy when he is in the house.

‘I love you too, Edie,’ he replies. ‘Don’t you forget it.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Be brave. Chin up.’

‘Yes, Uncle.’

The room sweetens with the scent of baking pastry. He drifts into sleep, head tipped back, mouth agape. I devour him with my eyes, as though by some trick of memory I can gorge myself on this moment and keep it forever; as though, by sheer force of childish possessiveness, I can hold him here.

Perhaps it is guilt at wanting him to stay that makes me do it. Perhaps it is curiosity. Perhaps I want to plumb the mystery of Ma’s monthly troubles and discover what transforms her into a hermit. Perhaps Ma’s sobriety is a lie and she spends three days as a dancer in a high-kicking line of women with frothy petticoats. Perhaps it is something for which I have no word.

I slip from my uncle’s lap. He does not stir. His breath wheezes in and out, halfway to a snore. I pour a cup of tea and stir in an extra spoonful of sugar. Nana is always praising its powers. By taking a cup to my slumbering mother I shall prove I care for her.

I tiptoe up the stairs with such a pounding of the heart, I think it will pop out of my mouth. The cup shivers on its saucer in a sympathetic rhythm. I pause at the stairhead. Ma’s door presents a blank face. I try the handle and nothing happens. I am surprised by how relieved I feel. I can slink downstairs, climb back on to my uncle’s knee and chide myself for disobedience. He can drink the tea.

But the catch is merely stiff. I twist it fully and the chamber releases with a clank. The door swings open, hinges shrieking. The curtains block out the sunlight but I can make out the mound of Ma’s body upon the bed, bundled up beneath the quilt. The noise is sure to have woken her. She does not move.

‘Ma?’ I whisper. ‘Here’s a lovely cup of tea.’ I hold my offering at arm’s length as if its perfume might steal into her nostrils and tempt her awake. ‘It’s nice and hot. Just as you like it.’

Nothing. My hand trembles. The china clinks.

‘Ma?’ I say, louder.

Outside, the rag and bone man yells rag a’ bo’aah! loud enough to rouse a bear from hibernation. Ma does not budge.

‘Ma!’ I cry.

I run to her bedside. There is not so much as the gentlest snore to be heard, not a breath. I’m seized with panic. Have women’s problems been the death of her? Hard on the heels of fear dawns the thought that if she is dead, Uncle Arthur can stay forever. I will be happy. I shove it away but it is too late: it is the worst thought I’ve ever had. Everything Ma says is true. She does know me better than I know myself. I am a horrible child.

‘Ma?’ I quaver. ‘Please don’t be dead. I love you.’ I try to sound sincere, but quail with the knowledge that she’ll know I’m lying. ‘I don’t want you to die!’ I wail.

She does not answer. I don’t deserve to have a mother. I don’t deserve anything. I reach out and grasp her shoulder. It is pliable to the touch. Hardly like bone.

‘Ma?’ I ask, withdrawing my hand.

There is no reply. I prod her with a timid finger. She gives way as though her body is the consistency of rag pudding. Some awful change has been wrought upon her. The ailments at which she hints so darkly are so ferocious they have rendered her boneless. Crazed with misery and terror, I shake her – hard. Something breaks off under the blankets. I freeze. The room is ghastly with silence.

‘Ma!’ I shriek. ‘I’ve killed you!’

I hurl myself on to her prone form, hugging her so fiercely the headboard rattles. The cup of tea spills across the eiderdown. I must clean it right away or it will stain. I tear away the covers, revealing Ma’s body. Except it is not Ma’s body. I blink. It has to be, I tell myself. But, however many times I squeeze my eyes shut and open them, the truth is incontrovertible. Laid along the length of the mattress is a line of cushions.

My mind reels. Where has she gone?

I race downstairs to tell Uncle Arthur the terrible news. He nods in the chair, blanketed in the scent of baking. If I wake him, this moment will shatter as surely as if I threw a bucket of stones upon it. I dread what he may say: that Ma is a dancer in the halls, does make a spectacle of herself in a skirt of feathers and nothing else.

But that’s not what I truly fear. I don’t know why, but somehow I’ll be the one to blame for Ma’s absence. After all, I’m the one Ma never kisses. I’m the one Ma won’t hug. If Ma goes away for three days, it’s bound to be because of me.

I can’t bear the thought of Uncle Arthur’s face changing from love to coldness; can’t bear the thought that today’s hug may be the last. I tiptoe to my room, and do not speak a word: not to him, not to Nana, not even to the picture of Papa. If I don’t tell, no one will know what I’ve discovered. If I pretend hard enough, maybe I can convince myself it didn’t happen. Even if it’s a lie, I’d rather have a happy lie than the agonising truth.

Two days later, Ma is in the kitchen when I come downstairs for breakfast. I run to her and bury my face into her apron.

‘Don’t cling,’ she snaps. ‘You’re not a baby. I can’t move for your mithering.’

‘Where’ve you been?’ I moan.

‘In bed.’

I squeeze harder. She walks peg-leg across the kitchen, dragging me with her. I’m so relieved to see her that any determination to keep my secret disappears into thin air.

‘No you weren’t.’

She grinds to a halt and grasps my shoulders. ‘What did you say?’

‘I brought you a cup of tea,’ I mumble. ‘You weren’t there.’

Her features twist. She looks like a dog backed into a corner. ‘I told you never to disturb me!’ she roars, giving me a furious shake. ‘Spying on me, were you?’

‘I was scared you’d gone forever!’

‘Scared?’ Her eyes shift from cornered to crafty. ‘Yes, of course I’d gone. I can’t stand being around you with your infernal snivelling and pawing.’

‘Ma!’ I wail.

‘Don’t you come crying to me. All you had to do was give me three days’ peace. You’ve brought this on yourself.’

This is the secret Ma and Nana argue about. I should have guessed it. I am so unlovable my own mother has to escape from me each month. This is why she is always angry. I deserve it. I must do. Ma would never lie. Of all the tasks I set myself, it was to make Ma love me. I have failed.

GNOME
1899

Every night it’s the same.

I come to, gasping, and I’m off that bed like it’s on fire. I squint at the mirror but won’t be convinced till I’ve run my hands the long and the short of what I see: head, fingers, knees and toes, ballocks and bumhole. It’s only then I can breathe easy. I’m in one piece, all twelve fine upstanding years of me.

It’s a crying shame to cover such a splendid specimen but I can’t go outdoors in my birthday suit and that’s a fact. Nor shall I wear out this night in self-admiration when there’s adventure to be had. The moon doth shine as bright as day, et cetera, and I have merriment to attend to. A lad of my mettle can perish of cloistering cling and playlessness.

I drag my britches from underneath the mattress where they’ve been pressed a treat and tuck my hair under my cap. With my shirt half-buttoned I’m raring to be gone, but there’s no point in doing so without a penny in my pocket. I tiptoe downstairs quieter than the mice worrying the walls and dig my hand into the sugar bowl on the mantel. If Mam will insist on stowing thruppences in such an obvious place it’s her funeral if half go missing.

I avoid the front door. The shunt and rattle of those bolts are enough to wake the dead and I’d get what for. Out of the bedroom window is my way, the best way. I creep back up without a squeak and pound the corner of the sash: three sharp punches and it slides up, wide enough to stick out my head. My left arm follows, then the right and to round it off I wriggle my hips clear. Watch a cat ooze under a door and you’ll know how it’s done.

I am free.

I swing off the ledge, ripping the seat of my trousers. I’ve no time to attend to such inconsequential matters. Mam will fix it. Down the fall-pipe, hit the ground and I run, savouring that first rush of delight, heady as a pint of best bitter downed in a single gulp.

I dance the tightrope of the pavement edge, dash between soot-faced terraces that squat low on their haunches. It matters not what I’m racing from or to; all I know is that I am alive. I am a mucker, a chancer, a chavvy, a cove. I grab life by the neck and squeeze every drop into my cup. If it’s good, I’ll take it by the barrel. If it’s bad I’ll do the same. I take it all: the world and his wife, the moon on a stick and the stars to sprinkle like salt on my potatoes. I hammer on doors for the thundering crash of it. Chuck stones at windows to hear the glass crack and the spluttering interrupted snores of those inside.

‘Wake up!’ I cry, windmilling my arms. ‘Life’s too short to spend it sleeping!’

I am the handspring of time between shut-eye and wake-up, the dream forgotten upon waking, the taste it leaves under the tongue. I am the crust of sleep in the eyes, the grit on the sheet. I am the yawning drag of Monday morning. You can keep the day with all its labour, misery and grime. I am King of the Night. I am Gnome.

I won’t be here forever. I have plans. Away from cramped windows, tiny doors, squeezed staircases; away from brick and cloud and rain-puddled gutters. I will go west. Not Liverpool, not Ireland – America. There’s a dream of a place: men in broad-brimmed hats and fancy moustaches so long they can wrap them around their thumbs; cornfields that stretch forever with not a fence to bar the way; cattle herds that take a day to rumble by. That’s where I’ll go. See if I don’t. It’s a greater journey than I can make in one night. But a man must have dreams.

All in good time. Tonight, Shudehill Market will suffice. It’s a fine place for a Saturday night’s entertainment, or any night for that matter. The crowd is as thick as mustard. I spot Russians, Latvians, Italians, Syrians, Egyptians: men with faces dark as a japanned brougham. Their tongue-twister salutations call out to me like the very sirens and I am tugged into their wake.

I stroll through the jumble of stalls. The air is busy with Manchester aromas, surpassing all the perfumes of Arabia: treacle tarts rub up to meat puddings; tureens of pea soup steam alongside pyramids of oranges so vivid they sting your eyes; buns and barms are hawked cheap by the stale sackful. Butchers bawl their bargains. Despite the reek of meat left standing all day like a tart with no takers, there’s still a pack of ravenous crones haggling over tongue and cow-heel, tripe and heart.

A pie stall tantalises. I’m hungry enough to eat a horse, which is as well for I bet my berries that’s what’s in them. I slap down tuppence and savour my supper under the stars, or the closest Manchester gets to them. I wolf it so fast a scrap of crust catches and I cough. My feet hiccup, the cobbles fly up to meet me and I sprawl, nose-down in muck and grease and God knows what else.

A hand grabs the back of my jacket and hauls me upright. I wrap my hands around my head in case he’s of a mind to clout me, but this stranger has come to my rescue.

‘Careful, lad,’ he roars. ‘You nearly bought it there.’

He jerks his head at the wagon thundering past. It shows no sign of having slowed by so much as an inch to avoid crushing me into cag-mag.

‘Thank you,’ I say, spraying pastry.

My saviour laughs. ‘Next time, save me a bit of pie.’

I lick my fingers. What a fine night this is turning out to be. The older lads and lasses pay me no mind, too busy with their rough flirtations. One girl pauses before the chap of her choice, plucks the flower from his buttonhole and bites off half the petals before crushing it back into its tiny hole. His chin hangs in a gawp as she struts away, earrings swaying, swinging her umbrella like a sword. Another pert miss, hat loaded with more fruit than a costermonger’s barrow, swipes the tea mug from her beau and takes a good long draught before returning it, a crescent of scarlet greasing the rim.

I stick out my chest in the hope of gathering similar attentions. I might, you know. One day. For now, I loiter at the tea-stand, entertained by the music of coarse songs and coarser jokes. I chuckle at the half I understand, laugh louder at the half I do not. Not that it’s only tea in those cups. Tea and a bit will get a fellow a splash from a mysterious jug kept beneath the counter and it certainly isn’t water. I slap down a sixpence, wink knowingly.

‘Hop it, short-arse,’ growls my host. ‘It’s not for little boys.’

‘Get knotted,’ I retort. ‘I’m fifteen!’

‘My arse. When you’re tall enough to see over the counter, then I’ll serve you.’

I’ve a few inches to go. In this world you need to choose your battles, so I screw up the sodden bit of newspaper that held my pie and bounce it off the head of the nearest urchin. He spins about with a glare fit to take the head off a glass of porter, takes one look at the size of me and changes his mind. He rubs his noggin, contenting himself with a scowl. Not that I intend him any harm: it is exuberance, not meanness of the heart.

I’m still ravenous. Coins clink a reminder: Don’t let us go to waste! I splash out on an ounce of cinder toffee. The taste spirits me away to a place of fireworks, a sweet yet bitter recollection and one I do not wish to have in my head. I spit out the muck and the memory with it, shove the remainder into the hands of the little lad. He unwraps the bag, stares at it in disbelief.

‘Take it,’ I grunt. ‘No catch.’

He eyes me like I’m a god come down to earth with a fistful of miracles. In search of fresh diversion I walk on, my adoring acolyte dogging my shadow. Beggars clot shop doorways, hands outstretched, eyes as empty as winter windows. Women gaudy with rouge gear up for a night of horizontal wrestling. Carts are lined up beneath their lanterns, the drovers supping quarts of four-ale. Halfway along the wall, a puppet booth has been set up, ringed by a brood of grubby nose-pickers. Punch is battering Judy against a painted backdrop of pots and pans.

That’s the way to do it, quacks Punch.

I elbow my pipsqueak friend and point at Punch’s beaky nose. ‘See that hooter?’ I say. ‘It’s where he stores his sausages.’

I wait for him to laugh. His mouth hangs open, catching moths, still unable to believe that I gave him an ounce of toffee free, gratis and for nothing. My talents are sorely wasted on some fellows. The play proceeds with the usual thrashing and squawking of blue murder. Judy sprawls on the counter, staring at me with wooden eyes as Punch belabours her.

Take that you shitty-arsed cow! he screeches, employing words not in the regular repertoire. Here’s another, shit-faced old bag.

My little pal tugs my sleeve. His lower lip is trembling. I take a moment to survey the sea of small children. Every last one of them is quivering on the verge of tears. I can’t spot a single mother. They’ve all deserted their babes to go in search of a bottle of stout. It seems I have been left in charge of this ragged army. What a fine general I shall be. I rub my hands, take a deep breath and echo the puppeteer.

‘Shitty-arsed cow!’ I yell.

No one threatens to wash out my mouth with soap. The carters chuckle at my impertinence. I nudge my companion encouragingly. He combs grubby fingers through his hair so that it stands up in an exclamation mark, eyes wide with the realisation that no one’s about to thump better manners into him either.

‘Shitty-arsed cow,’ he whispers all in a rush, in case time runs out on insolence and he is called to account.

The little ’uns screw their heads around from the marionettes and gawk at us.

‘Go on,’ I say, thumbing my lapels. ‘You can shout as loud as you like.’

One girl shakes her head. She fusses with the hem of her pinafore, revealing stockings going weak at the knees. We don’t need her. The rest take my lead, in cautious disbelief at first, then louder, till the whole cats’ chorus are yowling: Shitty-arsed cow, shitty-arsed cow. I am their bandleader, stamping out the rhythm of the words as we parade in a circle. Some bang invisible drums, some clash cymbals, some thrust trombones out and in and out again, all to the tune of shitty-arsed cow, shitty-arsed cow. I am so swept up in the cavalcade that my devotee has to tug my sleeve three times before I take notice.

‘Look,’ he says, pointing.

‘What? Don’t stop now. We are having such larks.’ I holler shitty-arsed cow for good measure.

‘No, look,’ he repeats.

The puppets have been joined by their master, a scrawny man with a nose the shape and size of a King Edward’s, face curdled with bile. He rams Judy face down on to the shelf at the front of the booth and thrashes her with such force that plaster brains tumble like rice.

‘Turd! Turd!’ he shrieks, spittle flying from drawn-back lips.

‘Turd,’ I snicker. ‘He said turd.’

Judy slumps, arms drooping over the cloth. Punch’s red coat hangs in shreds, the whole of his hump and half his knobbled cap broken away. The backdrop tangles around the puppeteer’s arm but he continues to whack the puppets against each other, screaming obscenity after obscenity.

‘Look at the mess he’s making,’ gasps the boy. ‘Shouldn’t we tell somebody?’

I shrug. I don’t care if he drags the whole tent around his ears. I don’t care if he pulps the puppets into glue and the children bawl their eyes out. Mayhem is my meat and drink.

‘Stop being such a little prig,’ I snap. ‘This is the most fun I’ve had in an age.’

It’s only when every infant is wailing that the drovers put down their pipes and pile in. They cart off the puppet-master, still yelling filth. This must be the best, most roisterous, boisterous night known to man or boy.

I am encircled by dirty faces, agog for the next game. I am so engaged with racking my brains that I do not notice the bigger lads until I’m surrounded. One by one my midget congregation melt away, leaving me alone with this new gang. At first they ignore me, busy punching each other in a comradely fashion, although one of them strikes with far more vicious intent than the others. I’m glad he’s not whacking me. Though not the tallest, he carries the mantle of king upon his shoulders. He also wears a black eye like a campaign medal.

‘That’s some shiner you’ve got there, Reg,’ says a lad with a face like a ferret and hair to match.

‘It is indeed, Wilfred,’ says Reg.

Quicker than a bolt of lightning, Reg thumps Wilfred in the guts. He doubles over, wheezing. No one dares go to their comrade’s aid, for fear they’ll be next in line for similar treatment.

Reg chuckles, the sound of a dog being strangled. ‘You should see the other fellow.’

The gang snigger timidly and I join in. It is a mistake. Reg twists his head in my direction.

‘Who are you, pipsqueak?’ he says, legs apart, hands deep in his pockets and pushing out the front of his trousers.

‘I’m Gnome, that’s who I am,’ I say with as much of a swagger as I can muster.

He grins, his teeth sharp and grimy. ‘Where did you crawl in from? Never seen you before.’

‘You have,’ I snort. ‘Here every night, so I am.’

‘Are you now?’ he replies. He turns to his companions, who form a circle. ‘He says he’s here every night.’ They snicker, sharing the joke I am not privy to. The ring of bodies tightens. ‘I’m in charge here,’ Reg declares. ‘Time for you to step away, and step lively.’

‘Don’t see why I should,’ I reply, fists in my britches. He’s not the only one who can thrust out his nackers.

Wilfred lurches forward. ‘How dare you talk to Reg like that,’ he snarls, still cringing from the blow he received from the man in question.

I wither him with a pitying glance. Poor sap, if he thinks having a pop at me will restore him to his master’s good books. His face reddens.

‘You little—’ he growls, aiming a punch. ‘Show some respect!’

I duck, quickly enough to avoid a broken nose, too slow to save my cap from being knocked off. Curls tumble as far as my shoulders. There’s a pause. I retrieve my hat from the cobbles, shove it back on my head.

‘My my,’ says Wilfred, whistling appreciatively. ‘What have we here?’

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ I grunt, tucking away hanks of hair.

‘You’re a girl!’ he hoots.

‘Don’t talk soft,’ I reply with a snort of derision. I turn to Reg. ‘Are all your lot this daft?’

It is another mistake.

‘Wilf’s got a point, for once,’ says Reg. Wilfred preens in the glow of approval. ‘Maybe you are a girl.’

‘I’m bloody not.’ I hawk and spit. My mouth is dry and I barely make a mark.

‘Let’s have a better look at you,’ Reg murmurs, stepping close. I smell gin, so strong and thick you could wring him like a dishcloth straight into the bottle. He grabs one of my ringlets and rubs it between his fingers. ‘I declare. You’re a proper Bubbles.’

‘Don’t call me that.’

‘Bubbles!’ squawks Wilfred.

‘Shut up!’ I cry.

‘I’ll call you what I like,’ leers Reg. ‘You’re a genuine, certified Pears advertisement.’

He circles his thumb and forefinger and blows through the hole. Another chap cracks the brim of his boater, conjuring it into a makeshift bonnet and puckering his lips for a kiss. Another picks up the hem of an imaginary skirt and prances around me. One after the other, they join in the pantomime.

Bubbles!

Bubbles!

What a dainty little damsel, all sugar and spice.

Round and round they go, Reg chasing after and growling like a bear. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, so I clap and cheer, loud as the rest. I’ll show them I’m the kind of fellow who can laugh at himself. I’d be a welcome addition to their number. With the suddenness of a thunderclap, they stop. I stop also, but a second behind. They stare at me, chests heaving.

Reg draws his hand across his mouth. ‘Who said you could laugh?’

‘No one,’ I mumble.

A chill crawls down my thighs, right to my boots. Reg pokes me in the chest.

‘You’re laughing at me, aren’t you?’

‘No sir!’ I exclaim.

I stumble under the assault of his finger. Someone kicks my legs from under me and I drop to my knees, hard and heavy as a sack of turnips. Wilfred wrenches my arms behind my back and holds them tight. Reg presses his nose to mine. He has sharp eyes that see through me as easy as through a piece of glass, right to the other side.

‘You little shit. Asking for trouble, aren’t you, eh?’

‘You tell him, Reg,’ says Wilfred, his expression even more weasel-like, if that were possible. ‘How about a new game?’ he murmurs in Reg’s ear. ‘A man’s game.’

The world breathes in, like that moment before a storm begins. I hold particularly still.

‘There’s a thought,’ says Reg.

He unbuttons his fly with luxurious deliberation, licking his lips to ensure I am paying close attention, which I am. He slides his hand into the gap and draws out his porker. It’s near long enough to tie a knot in. The other lads grin, their eyes slick with knowing.

‘A proper man’s pipe, that’s what I’ve got. How’d you like to blow bubbles on this?’

I try not to breathe. I mustn’t show I’m spooked. If he smells fear who knows where this may end?

‘Even better, how about a ride on Jumbo?’ he purrs. He tugs his pocket linings inside out. They look uncommonly like elephant ears. ‘Little girls like a circus ride.’

His coven giggle, wheezing like witches. It takes every ounce of courage to affect an air of boredom. I roll my eyes lazily and shuffle away.

‘Not so fast,’ leers Wilfred.

He wraps his arm around my throat, shoving his nadger into my spine. It’s rigid and I’m damned if I can understand why. I have no leisure to solve the conundrum, for I am far too exercised by having the life crushed out of me. Reg swings his hips from side to side and his sausage swings too. He takes a lumbering step forward.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Only a penny a ride.’

‘That’s a bargain,’ says Wilfred.

‘Cheap at half the price,’ quips another, until the whole nasty lot are egging him on.

‘Put him down!’ blares a woman in a hat as broad as a soup tureen. She waggles her finger in the direction of Reg’s privates. ‘You can put that away and all.’

‘Says who?’

‘Says me, Reginald Awkright. He’s half your size.’

‘We’re only playing.’

‘You’re throttling him.’

Wilfred tightens his grip. ‘Nah. Bit of rough and tumble, isn’t it, Bubbles?’

‘Tumble!’ I squeak.

‘See?’ says Reg. ‘He loves it, don’t you?’

Wilfred squeezes again, like I’m a set of bagpipes.

‘Yes!’ I rasp.

‘I said, leave the poor mite be,’ she snaps. ‘He can’t hardly breathe. I know your sort, Reginald.’

He lets out a whickering laugh. ‘I know your sort and all, Jessie, you wet-kneed slapper.’

The remainder of their banter is lost in the roaring between my ears. Reg and his rabble seem a long way off. Or rather my head seems a long way from them, detached from the neck and floating away. It is most peculiar, very like the feeling I get when I – she—

I splutter into myself. ‘Get off me!’ I shriek.

Whether it’s the command in the woman’s voice, or the shock of me fighting back, I’ve no idea, but Wilfred loosens his stranglehold. I tumble forwards, giving my elbow a blinder of a crack and half stagger, half crawl away as fast as I can. Jessie picks me up as easily as you might a dropped glove. I don’t cling to her like a drowning man to a lifebelt. Not me, not by a long chalk. I just need to steady myself on her arm, that’s all.

‘There you go,’ she says, setting me upright. She rounds on the gang. ‘As for you lot, play nicely or bugger off.’

She commences patting dirt off my jacket. She smells of trapped violets.

‘I’m all right. Don’t need help,’ I say half-heartedly.

‘You tell her,’ jeers Reg. ‘See? He doesn’t want you, you old whore.’

The boys snigger at the insult. I wait for the blubbing to start. But she tips up her chin with something that looks uncommonly like pride.

‘Don’t you just wish you could get a morsel of what I’ve got to offer!’ she hoots.

‘As heck as like,’ snarls Reg. I’ve never seen a man’s eyes so famished. He points at me. ‘I wouldn’t touch you with his,’ he declares.

Jessie furnishes us with a bray of merriment, turns with extravagant grace and promenades into the throng. I watch her go, mightily impressed. I’ve no idea why Reg called her old, either. She’s as pretty as a picture. The sort of woman a chap would be proud to have on his arm. However, I have precious little opportunity for approbation.

‘Just like a girl,’ he growls. ‘Ganging up on us.’

‘I’m not a flaming girl,’ I sigh with wearied emphasis. ‘You blind or brainless?’

‘You cheeky little sod. You are what I say you are.’

‘That’s right,’ says Wilfred, still determined to get on the right side of Reg. He grinds his fist into his eye socket. ‘Run to Mama,’ he whines. ‘Wah, wah, Mama!’

Reg twists his unpleasant attention from me to Wilfred. My face cools as the awful heat is taken away.

‘Who are you calling Mama?’ he says.

‘I didn’t mean you, Reg, old pal. I mean her.’ He stabs a finger in the direction of Jessie. She’s long gone and he is pointing at a vacancy.

‘I don’t see anyone.’

I concentrate on making myself unnoticeable. Things could still change in a heartbeat.

‘It’s a joke,’ Wilfred blusters.

‘I know what a joke is,’ Reg says. ‘You saying I don’t?’

‘No! Never!’

Reg inhales slowly and glances at me. I’m out of arm’s reach. Wilfred isn’t. ‘You saying I’m like that old tart?’

‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘Sounds exactly like what he’s saying.’

There’s a horrified silence. No one drops so much as a giggle into it. Reg jabs a rigid finger into Wilfred’s chest. He reels backwards like he’s been hit with half a house brick.

‘No!’ he wails. ‘It was a joke! I didn’t mean you! We’re chums, aren’t we?’

Reg roars and at the signal the whole lot of them pile on to their new enemy. I don’t hang about to see the outcome. My conscience pricks briefly about dropping Wilfred into it, but it was him or me. I show the cleanest pair of heels this side of the Mersey and run slap bang into the lady who saved me. Of course, she didn’t exactly save me. I did that for myself.

‘Mind where you’re going!’ she chirps. ‘Oh, it’s you. You all right?’

‘Course I am,’ I mumble. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

She ought to tell me to get lost and I don’t know why she doesn’t. She ruffles my hair. I rub my head against her hand like a cat that aches to be scratched. Her fingers comb through my curls.

‘Bonny lad,’ she purrs.

The words startle me back into my skin.

‘Leave off!’ I squeak. ‘I’m no one’s bonny anything!’

I untangle myself from her skirts and fire homewards like a rocket. The kitchen is busy: Grandma sucking on that disgusting pipe of hers and Mam waving her hand and muttering, What a stink. Not that Grandma takes a blind bit of notice. So much for the welcoming bosom. After the night I’ve had a smile wouldn’t go amiss. I help myself to a slice of bread and dripping, plonk myself in front of the range and stare at the coals. I can’t go back to Shudehill. Reg will make my life a bloody misery. Where else can I go? What else do I have?

‘Is all well?’ asks Grandma, deigning to notice my presence. She taps her pipe on the edge of the table, to another complaint from Mam.

‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ I grumble through a mouthful.

‘Don’t you give me any of your lip,’ she replies.

‘You leave him alone,’ chips in Mam without looking at me. ‘He’s my special treat, so he is.’

‘It wouldn’t hurt to hear you saying that about Edie once in a while.’

Mam snorts. ‘Her? I wish things were the other way around.’

‘That’s half-daft. How can you dote on one and not the other?’

‘I’ll do as I please, thank you very much. All any mother wants is an honest-to-goodness son to do her proud. If you don’t like it, there’s the door and remember to shut it behind you.’

I scoff my bread, looking from one to the other. Biddies. I’ll never unravel the mare’s nest between their ears. But what I do hear is an advantage I didn’t know I had. I lick my fingers and leave them to it.

The bedroom sash is open. I clamber through the gap and ride the stone saddle of the windowsill, one foot in and one out. The sky is becoming pale as it considers the coming morning. I puff out my chest, draw the last scraps of night into my body until there’s no telling us apart.

There was a time.

I’ve not forgotten that land of sweet content, bright as a favourite story told at bedtime. Things aren’t the same since Edie got frozen into an obedience she imagines will thaw our flint-hearted mother into loving her. You may as well try to fold gravy. Mam can’t stand baa-lambs unless they come smothered in mint sauce.

Edie’s worse than a mouse; at least mice chew the walls and confetti the floor with their tiny turds. Her goodness clings like quicksand. If I get sucked in, it’ll be curtains. Every night I step close and try to take her hand, like we used to, but our fingers slide through each other. It’s like she doesn’t believe in me; like she thinks I’m not real. I don’t know what more I can do.

My chest is hot and tight. I grind my teeth until the feeling passes. If you’ve been booted out of Eden, moping like a snot-nosed toddlekins won’t bring it back. I will not think about things I can’t have. Fairy tales are for the cradle and I left that a long while ago.

Living in a houseful of women has dragged me down to their simpering level. I must toughen up if I’m going to make my way in this wide world. I’m not a bad lad; not the type to tie cans to a cat’s tail, string them up by their paws, set them on fire or any one of the bloody things boys do. But there’s no point being soft. In this life, you’re either a ginger tom swaggering the streets or a cowering kitten that gets trampled underfoot. I’ll let tonight be a lesson. My fault for not standing my ground, for being caught unawares. God helps those who help themselves.

I’m not lonely. Not by a long chalk. I just need to meet the right fellows, that’s all. The sort of pals who will stick by a chap through thick and thin. So what if I have to go to ground for a while? I’ve got tomorrow night, even if I have to steer clear of Shudehill. There’s always another night. There has to be. A man must have dreams.

EDIE
1900–1901

I grow up with my ear to the floor, listening to Ma and Nana fight.

They argue about the beer, the takings, the sawdust, the spittoons, the weather, the dirt on the doorstep. If they chose the kitchen, I’d be none the wiser. But they go at it hammer and tongs in the scullery, beneath my room. Maybe they think I’m asleep; maybe they think me too much of a mouse to eavesdrop; maybe they don’t care either way. It is such a habitual lullaby I learn to sleep through it, much in the way that folk who live next to the Liverpool line slumber through the rattle of trains.

So things continue. The old century tips into the new, not that it makes a scrap of difference to my days. My height belies my age. At thirteen I overtop every sixteen-year-old hereabouts: a gangling beanpole of a girl as graceful as a donkey with three legs.

Ma won’t let me hide upstairs and read my schoolbooks, so I help out in The Comet. The customers make jokes at their plain Jane barmaid and I never master Ma’s knack for laughing yet keeping them at arm’s length at the same time. That’s not to say they are wicked folk; they are our neighbours and a mild crew by and large. Night after night, month after month, I listen to the same conversations about dogs and wives; who’s drowned in the Bridgewater; who’s been flattened by a cart. I ache for something I cannot put my finger on. But there’s no point wishing on half a wishbone, or setting my heart on stars when the likes of me won’t climb higher than the chimney.

So I nod, smile, serve beer and dread Thursdays. It is the day the ginger-moustached groper drops in, regular as the man from the Pearl come for his penny. I grow cleverer at avoiding him, although nothing stops his gaze following me around the room and singeing holes in my apron.

One evening, as I’m drifting into the dark hole of sleep, I prick awake. At first I think it’s the cold, for an icier February I never knew, but it is only Ma and Nana at loggerheads. I pull the blanket over my head.

My ears burn. There is an unaccountable magic wrought when one is the subject of conversation, some vibration of the ether that communicates itself directly to the person being talked about. I pick out my name, hissed over and over. They are arguing about me.

I can’t hear precisely what they are saying. I need more. I creep out of bed, and, praying that the stairs do not squeak, tiptoe to the scullery door.

‘She’s starting to notice,’ says my grandmother.

‘Is she?’ snorts Ma. ‘She wouldn’t notice a loaded dray if it drove over her, horse and all. She’s as thick as a ditch.’

‘She is not.’

‘I can’t do a thing with her,’ says Ma. ‘I set her to a simple task and she falls asleep with the broom in her hand. Lazy good-for-nothing.’

My throat tightens at the hurtful words.

‘Exhaustion. It’s not her fault. You know the cause as well as I.’

‘I most certainly do not,’ grunts Ma.

‘Cissy. It is time to call a halt to silence.’

All hell breaks loose: the kettle clangs on to the range; pots bang and scrape and rattle.

‘I will not have this subject discussed under my roof!’ Ma roars, fit to burst the windows out of their frames. ‘It’s disgusting!’

‘She’s old enough to understand!’ shouts Nana over the racket. ‘If you won’t tell her, let me.’

‘What, so she can let it slip at school? In church? On the street?’

‘She won’t do that.’

‘Won’t she? She’s addled enough. We’d be driven out. Don’t you remember—’

‘I do,’ sighs Nana.

‘Want that all over again?’

There’s a pause. I want to scratch my nose. It seems to contain a beetle with barbed claws.

Nana lets out a heavy sigh. ‘Of course not.’

‘You see? We’d all be better off if she’d never been born.’

‘Cissy! What a terrible thing to say.’

‘Is it? Before she came along I had a fine man, so I did.’

‘Fine? He was a work-shy, good-for-nothing—’

‘How dare you speak ill of the dead!’

‘Away with your nonsense, Cissy. Everyone knows he ran off with that baggage from—’

‘Who can blame him?’ Ma cries. ‘I’d be away if I could, and all. No decent man would …’ The pandemonium subsides. Through the crack in the door I see Nana cup her hand around Ma’s cheek. ‘Don’t …’ Ma says. It is a perilous sound such as a child might make and shocks me far more than any bellow.

‘My kindness did you no harm, Cissy. Surely you can do the same for your own child.’

‘Don’t,’ she replies in the same strangled squeak. ‘Don’t make me talk about this. I can’t. We are shameful. We are cursed!’

‘We are not cursed. I don’t know why you insist on this idiocy. You know the truth, plain as your head and toes and everything that lies between.’

The truth? I tremble. My questions are about to be answered.

‘Don’t you dare speak to me and – and—’

Ma’s words stutter to a halt. I see an impossible thing: Nana wraps her arms around my mother. She bears it a moment only. Like a fly trapped by a spider, she flails until she breaks free and dashes into the back yard, slamming the door behind her. I return to my bed and bury my head under the pillow. Awful words fill my head: thick as a ditch, lazy, shameful, cursed. Papa didn’t die. He ran away.

Next morning, I wake with knots in my hair and dirt beneath my fingernails as usual. I can’t go on like this. What’s more, I shall not. This morning will be different, I tell myself bravely. I am almost fourteen and I need answers. I will have them, if it’s the last thing I do. My hand trembles as I brush my hair. After tidying myself as best I can, I make my way downstairs.

Ma is out, as is Nana, which leaves me somewhat deflated. Lacking anything better with which to fill the time until they return, I peel potatoes for dinner. A while later, Ma comes in, knocking ice off her boots.

‘It’s coming on to snow,’ she remarks, somewhat unnecessarily. She removes her hat and slaps away imaginary flakes, not that one would be so foolhardy as to settle. I continue peeling. The stubs drop into the bowl and pile up like wet leaves. I clear my throat. I don’t know what to say, but I have to say something.

‘Ma,’ I begin.

‘What?’

Words find my tongue and spill. ‘I’ve heard you and Nana. Talking about me.’

‘Had your ear against the wall, have you?’ she spits. ‘Sneaky little madam. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times. Curiosity killed—’

‘Listen to me, Ma.’

‘Ma, Ma, Ma. You sound like a nanny goat.’

I pick up a potato and check for eyes. ‘I don’t know who I am. I just want to understand. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’

‘No idea what you’re on about,’ she replies in the sort of voice that indicates she knows only too well.

I turn the potato in my hand, rubbing its face with my thumb. I dunk it, rinsing away the mud and find a wound in the flesh where it was caught by the spade. It is mouldy through and through. I won’t be put off – not this time. I hurl the potato to the floor.

‘Don’t you go wasting food,’ she mutters.

‘It’s rotten.’

‘Don’t get testy with me, young … lady,’ she says with a pause before the word lady.

I toss the knife into the bucket of slops. Water splashes on to the floor.

‘Then give me some answers!’ I cry. It is a dangerous question, but silence never gave me anything. ‘I don’t know what you want from me.’

‘I want nothing from you.’ She grips my elbow and marches me across the room to the mirror. ‘Look at yourself.’

I regard my reflection in the yellowed glass. I’m nowhere close to prettiness, not by a country mile. ‘Looks aren’t everything,’ I say uncertainly.

‘What mother could love a face like that?’ She shakes her head, the staccato gesture of someone bothered by flies. ‘No one, that’s who. It betrays everything about you that is unwholesome. Unnatural. I should have thrown you out with the rest of the rubbish.’

This is not going how I wanted. There has to be a key to unlock the door to Ma’s spitefulness. If I can find the right words, I can speak them; the spell will be broken and she’ll soften. She’ll love me. Pathetic as it is, I still yearn for her affection.

‘Ma. All my life I’ve tried but there’s no pleasing you.’

‘You could never please me,’ she says, and stabs my chest with the point of her finger. Through the reddened skin the bone shows white. ‘Never!’

‘What did I ever do to make you so angry? Was it Papa running off?’

Her eyes stretch so wide open I can see the white around the iris.

‘What?’ she screams, shrill as a mill whistle. She jabs me with two fingers, then three, poking at my chest over and over, bunching her hand into a fist. I hold up my hands to shield myself from the blows. ‘Want to know why we argue about you?’ she cries. ‘You want the truth? Here it is. I hate you. From the day you were born, you’ve blighted my life. I never wanted you.’

‘Ma?’ My voice trembles. ‘You can’t mean that.’

‘Can’t I?’ she sneers. ‘Want to know what’s wrong with this family? You.’

‘No,’ I whisper.

She shakes my shoulder. ‘I. Was. Cursed. With. You.’

‘No, Ma.’

‘Lord only knows I tried to get rid of you. Knitting needles didn’t work. You were stuck fast like a pigeon up a chimney and I’ve had to put up with you ever since.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘Am I? Ask your sainted grandmother.’

‘What?’

‘That’s taken the wind out of your sails, hasn’t it? Go on, if you’re so clever. Run and complain how cruel I am. She only pretends to love you. She hates you too.’

And with that, she lets go of me. I crumple to the floor. She has said many things over the years and I’ve suffered her insults, borne her tirades. This is the first time she’s used the word hate. Like a child who picks at a scab until it bleeds, I’ve provoked Ma into spewing out the truth. It has turned to ashes in my mouth. This is the mystery I sought to plumb: hatred, pure and simple.

By the time I raise my head, the room is empty. I remain curled on the rug. I try to imagine myself a cat: a beast with no worries other than to lick its paws and sleep. My stolid imagination fails me. I am a repulsive girl, unwanted by my mother. Neither use nor ornament.

I lie there a while longer. Some grain of hope remains that Ma may relent and return. The house is silent, as if holding its breath: no shouting, no pounding of her feet up and down the boards. I wonder what she is doing, or rather not doing. I scramble to my feet and press my ear to the wall. I take a glass from the dresser and return to my listening post. I hold the glass to the brick and listen. There is a faint whooshing, like wind through trees.

‘I know you’re listening!’ Ma yells. I stagger backwards, dropping the glass with a crash. ‘I hate you, do you hear? Get away from me!’

Very carefully, I gather up the fragments. I can hardly put them on the shelf: Ma might cut herself. I stow them in my pinafore pocket.

‘I’ve broken a glass, Ma,’ I say timidly. No answer. The hush is unnerving, far more so than the sound of complaints. ‘The big one, with the blue ring around the top.’

I don’t know what to do. I want her to come and tell me off. The glass is a favourite of hers. I can’t remember a time when she did not have it. Gingerly, I shake the splinters on to the tabletop. If I can find some glue, I can mend it. But there don’t seem to be enough pieces to make it whole again. I can’t understand why the edges of each shard are red, until I look at my fingers and find the answer.

As I watch, a dreamlike sensation creeps over me. My fingertips are oozing blood, but seem unconnected to the rest of my body. There is no pain. There is no sensation of any kind. It is not unpleasant. With the same cool detachment, I notice that my pinafore is stained crimson. I will have to use cold water when I scrub it. Hot water sets bloodstains hard.

Time slips through my fingers. I stand there for hours, or a few seconds. I have no idea how to keep track of the minutes, nor indeed the point of such measurements. Questions cluster at the fringes of my consciousness. Why does Ma hate me so much? Why can’t I feel my fingers?

I glance at the half-completed jigsaw of glass, turn and leave the room. Walk down the corridor to the front door. Try to take my shawl from the peg. It snags on the hook, impossible to untangle. I step outdoors without it. I do not expect a stroll to solve any problem. I simply wish to remove myself from anguish.

I know it’s a mistake the moment my foot strikes the kerb. I’ve never known it so cold. Slush the colour of pewter slops underfoot, turning my toes to stone. It is neither night nor day, rather a time balanced between the two. I glance over my shoulder. The windows of The Comet twinkle with a cheery welcome. It is false. I’d rather cut off my own nose than creep back in. I press my face into the shrill edge of the wind and set out, whither I neither know nor care. If I am missed, Ma will think it a cause for celebration rather than sorrow.

Hulme is the nearest thing to quiet I’ve ever heard. Snowflakes tumble from a leaden sky; spears of ice dangle from the gutters. Clouds roll overhead, slow and black as coal barges. I think of us beneath: twisting our light-blind eyes upwards, necks bent beneath iron rain, and the wind sharp enough to pierce you right through.

I pass a smattering of folk swathed in thick coats, scarves drawn tight under the chin, their breath steaming behind them in a foaming wake. No one gasps at my bloodstained apron, or remarks that I should get to the infirmary sharpish, that I’ll catch my death. As I go, the sensation of cold lessens rather than intensifies. It is most curious. I wonder if I am truly walking down the street or if I’m dreaming the whole thing. Perhaps I am still at home, this very moment.

Home. I laugh out loud, to a flurry of turned heads. I no longer have a home; that has been made clear. I walk on through frigid sludge, numbness rising from my ankles to my knees. Gradually, the snowfall peters out and I find myself at the gate of Whitworth Park. I peer through the bars. The paths are streaked with ruts where mothers pushed perambulators earlier that afternoon. Snow cloaks the lawns and piles in heaps upon the bushes, transforming it into a strange, smothered landscape.

How I scale the locked gate I have no notion, but in the blink of an eye it is behind me. The clouds peel away, leaving the sky clear. I make my way into the park, ploughing through the drifts. I find myself lying down. I must have slipped and fallen. My shoulder and elbow shriek. It appears that I can feel pain, after all.

I struggle to my feet and continue walking, trailing my fingertips along the hedges. Without any warning, I am on my knees. I must have fallen again. I don’t remember. My memory is as full of holes as a tea strainer. I examine my arms, sleeves rolled to the elbow from when I peeled the potatoes. The flesh is bluish. There is no longer any sign of bleeding.

The snow is as thick as a mattress and as inviting. Without thinking overmuch about what I am doing, I lie down and sink into feather softness. I cannot recall ever feeling so content. I wonder if this is happiness. If so, it is very agreeable. I will stay here. There is no shouting. No loneliness. No confusion. No pain. No hate.

I close my eyes. A distant part of myself knows I ought to feel cold. If anything it is the opposite. Something that is not precisely warmth, but very much like it, steals through my limbs. It is unbearably sweet. Tears spring, forming icicles. My head draws away from my body, my limbs also. I lose sight of them. I do not care. I am at peace. It has all stopped. All of it. So simple.

My heart beats. The thumping grows in intensity until my body is shuddering. I am a door and someone is knocking so furiously I am being shifted off my hinges. I smile at the peculiar idea. In the thunder I hear a voice.

You! You! Get up!

‘Leave me alone,’ I mutter and stick my fingers into my ears. If I can’t hear him, he’ll have to go away. I’ll be able to hide. I will, I will.

You can’t do this! he yells. Edie!

All I want is to fall asleep. But this creature won’t let me.

‘Let me stay here,’ I say.

Not a chance.

‘I’m happy.’

You’re not.

‘Am so,’ I whine. ‘Just a little longer.’

Bloody get up! he screams. We need each other. There is a pause. I need you, Edie.

A longer silence follows, so profound I can sense each snowflake in the quilt beneath which I lie.

It’s not fair. You can’t do this to me.

‘You’re not real,’ I mumble.

I’m Gnome, you idiot. Have you forgotten?

A chill cuts to my core, far icier than the burrow in which I’m buried. I shake my head.

‘No. You are all in my mind. Gnome is a bad memory. Ma says …’

My brain is being dragged awake. I try to ignore its spark and fizz, try to slip back into the delicious lassitude, but it nags and niggles and will not let me lie. I hardly know if I pull myself or am pulled out of the snowdrift, but emerge I do.

Now, I feel the bitterness of the weather and wish I didn’t. I look over my shoulder at the soft bed I have just left, but the voice lays on the whip and drives me forward. Each step is like walking barefoot on broken glass. I stagger to the gate of the park and this time, climbing over is torture.

I lurch along the street, shivering. People throw sideways glances, wrinkling their lips at this guttersnipe straight from the pages of a cautionary tale told to warn girls of what they’ll be reduced to if they stray.

There is nowhere for me to go but The Comet. It is not home, not in the way the world takes the word, but it is all I have. By the time I turn on to Renshaw Street it is past closing time and the windows are dark. My fingers are so stiff I can barely open the door. I cower in front of the kitchen range and listen to my teeth chatter, oddly loud in the quiet house.

The broken glass has been cleared away, the plates and cups on the shelf rearranged. There’s no sign it was ever there. The only proof I left The Comet is my sodden pinafore. Did I really lie down in the snow? Was I really waiting for – wanting to – My mind gutters like a cheap candle.

I can’t stay here for Ma to trip over me come morning. I tiptoe through the public bar. Papa observes me from behind his glass.

‘Did you leave because of me?’ I whisper. ‘Who are you, really? Who am I?’ He lifts a hairy eyebrow. I’ve always taken his expression to be sympathetic, but after this evening, nothing is certain. ‘Why am I talking to you?’ I sigh. ‘You’re a photograph.’

I climb the stairs. Nana calls out a sleepy greeting. I peel off my filthy clothes, promising whatever guardian angel is listening that I’ll wash them tomorrow. I crawl into bed. Arguments rumble through the wall. The sound is almost comforting.

‘Why me?’ Ma whines. ‘What did I ever do to deserve this?’

‘You’re a hard woman, Cissy. The child is going out of her mind.’

‘So she should be.’

‘A secret is one thing. Hatred is another.’

My door opens. I hear the smoky wheeze of Nana’s breath. The mattress shifts as she lowers herself on to the end of the bed.

‘You shouldn’t rile your mother, child,’ she sighs. ‘She takes care of us all.’

She speaks carefully, and I know it is because Ma is eavesdropping.

‘Yes, Nana,’ I reply. I lower my voice. ‘Why does Ma hate me?’ I whisper.

‘What sort of foolish notion is that?’ she replies, but will not look me in the eye.

‘Am I so horrible?’ I say, words thick with misery.

‘Lass. There is nothing horrible about you,’ she replies with great tenderness.

‘Then why …’ I sob.

‘Your mother has a difficult time of it,’ she continues. ‘She’s not strong, not like you or me.’

I’m strong? It is a strange idea. Nana stretches out her arms, draws me into the safe harbour of her lap and begins to sing.

‘See how she runs, she tumbles and falls,

She catches the sunbeams that come through the door.

Nobody knows how I adore

Nana’s little girl.’

For the space of a song, I taste safety and it is delicious.

‘Will I grow up like Ma?’ I ask with a guilty blush I hope is obscured by the darkness of the room.

‘I pray to all the saints in heaven that you don’t,’ she sighs. ‘Enough. You might not need to sleep but I do. Goodnight.’

She presses dry lips to my brow. Her chin scratches. I think nothing of it, not till much later. I lie quietly, the warmth of my body soaking into the bed, and fall asleep.

The next morning, I wake up with not so much as a speck of dirt under my fingernails, nor one tangle in my hair. I regard myself in the mirror. Ugly as always, but miracles are not for the likes of me.

However, there has been a small miracle of sorts. The previous evening, I came close to extinguishing my life, and stayed my hand. I stumbled, but didn’t fall – not all the way. My mother poured her whole store of bile upon me, all fourteen unlucky years of it. It should have destroyed me. It did not. I have not been vanquished.

If I can survive that, I say to myself, I can survive anything. Perhaps Nana is right, and I am stronger than I imagine. I may have nowhere to go, nor any hope of escape. Yet I sense a core of steel of which I was not previously aware. Even if Nana cannot – will not – stand up to Ma, affection is affection and I’m not such a fool as to spurn it. Things may not be different in my life, but they are in my heart. I pledge myself to the improvement of both.

I am to be tested far sooner than expected.

The Wednesday after, all is as usual in The Comet: the bar full to bursting and a scuffle to stand closest to the fireplace. Ma and I circle each other like warring cats. She plays the cheery landlady, acting as if no cruel words were ever spoken. I move through the crowd, offering pipes from the rack to those who desire them, when one of the customers yells across the din.

‘Hey! What’s the weather like up there with you, lass?’

Every eye swivels in my direction. It is an old joke and one I am well used to. I stretch my lips into a tolerable impersonation of a smile.

‘How about a song, Lady Goliath?’ he shouts, clearly not done with me.

‘Her? She can’t carry a tune in a bucket,’ quips another toper.

‘Shush now, you’ll upset the wee creature. She can’t help having cloth ears.’

‘Wee? You blind all of a sudden?’

There ensues a general bout of mirth at my expense. I pick up a dirty glass.

‘Now, let’s have some respect.’

I throw a grateful glance at whoever has spoken in my defence and find myself eyeball to eyeball with the bane of my existence, copper eyebrows and all. I wasn’t expecting him till tomorrow. He smoothes his hands up and down the front of his waistcoat and tugs at his cuffs. His shirtsleeves are uncrumpled, uncommonly fresh for this late in the day. I wonder how he keeps himself so clean. I’d bite off my own tongue rather than remark upon it.

‘Give us a smile,’ he leers, pinching my cheek. ‘Anyone would think you weren’t pleased to see your Uncle Bob.’

‘You’re not my uncle,’ I reply as rudely as I can, which is not very.

‘I declare. You’ve got a sight more zest these days. Then again, I like a lass with a bit of spunk in her.’ He doffs his cap and rolls his eyes at Ma. ‘What say you, Mrs Latchford?’ he enquires, the soul of civility. ‘A song from the lips of your charming daughter?’

Ma rams a cloth into the throat of a pint pot and sniffs. ‘As you like it.’

‘Positively Shakespearian,’ he titters.

Ma shrugs and concentrates on pouring a precise measure of porter into the clean glass. The head is thick with cream. He returns his attention to me.

‘I wager that you are a nightingale!’ he trills. ‘Furnish us with a song!’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t know any songs,’ I mutter, worrying my apron into knots at the prospect of his slippery attentions twice a week rather than once.

‘I bet you do,’ says my tormentor cheerfully. ‘Do not disappoint your impatient audience!’

The room takes up the cry, banging beer pots on the tables and stamping their feet. I am trapped. I wonder what it is about me that makes this scoundrel feel he has the right to pin me to the spot. It’s clear that peace will not be restored until I’ve placated the crowd with a song.

‘“Father, O Father, come home to us now,”’ I whisper.

‘Speak up, love!’ someone cries.

‘Can’t hear you!’

‘Put some vim into it.’

I throw a pleading glance at Ma. She is looking in the opposite direction.

‘Go on,’ growls the gingery man. ‘Sing.’

I place one hand flat against my stomach and hold up the other, pointing a finger at the ceiling. I clear my throat, gabble the verse and scuttle back to the safety of the bar.

‘If you will parade yourself you deserve everything coming to you,’ says Ma sourly enough to take the polish off a chapel pew.

‘I did nothing!’

‘Oh, hush your moaning and take this,’ she snaps, shoving a platter of fried bread into my hands.

‘But, Ma …’ I whimper. I want to give that man a wide berth for the remainder of the evening. Indeed, for the rest of my life if I can help it.

‘Move, girl, or I’ll make you regret it.’

I squeeze between the tables. I’ve gone less than half a dozen paces when the pest grasps my arm and pulls me between his knees. He eyes the plate and smacks his lips.

‘Bringing me a treat, are you?’ he asks.

‘It’s for everyone.’

‘Such ingratitude!’ he chortles. ‘Is this how you treat your knight in shining armour? I saved you from the rude and churlish ways of this rabble. How about a thank you?’

‘I have to take the bread round.’ I take a step backwards, but he hangs on to my arm.

‘Go on. Give Uncle Bob first nibble,’ he says, poking me in the stomach.

I hold the bowl out of reach, but Ma barks my name and I have little choice but to proffer it, however unwillingly. He takes a piece with a dainty gesture and places it between his lips.

‘That’s tasty,’ he says, gaze swarming across my breasts.

I try to wriggle free. He presses his knees together like the jaws of a man-trap.

‘Let me go. Everyone else wants a bit.’

‘I’ll bet they do.’ He selects another piece of bread and slithers his tongue over it until it glistens with spittle. ‘I’ll bet you’ve got a queue of beaux lining up for what you’ve got.’

‘I don’t!’ I try to sound outraged at such an indelicate suggestion, but it comes out as petulance.

‘No?’ He swallows the damp morsel with a gulp. ‘Unplucked. How delectable.’ He sucks grease off his fingers and wipes them on his spotless waistcoat. ‘I must check such an assertion.’

As innocently as a man retrieving a dropped sixpence, he bends to the floor. Hidden by my petticoats, I feel his hand circle my ankle. I start away but am caught in the vice of his thighs. In a leisurely fashion, he draws himself upright and, as he does so, his fingers slide up my calf. I can’t move, can’t speak. He squeezes my knee.

Our eyes lock. He smiles with tender solicitation, as if it is the most natural thing in the world for a stranger to have his hand up a girl’s skirt. I look at the other customers. They are ogling their glasses and joking with each other as if we are quite invisible. I cast a desperate look at Ma. She is busy washing glasses. I open my mouth to shout for her to come and rescue me.

The cry shrivels.

What can I say? What sort of girl allows a man to do such a thing? The shame of it: I imagine every head in the room turning in my direction and seeing what is happening. I will bring ignominy on to Ma’s head. I will cause The Comet to become known as a den of iniquity where such carryings-on take place. Ma’s years of building up a respectable name dashed into smithereens in a moment.

His hand creeps an inch higher.

‘What a pretty thing you are,’ he says, tilting his head to one side. ‘I believe this is going to become my favourite beerhouse from this moment on, if it has you to tempt me so. Wednesday night, Thursday night. Why, every night, I declare.’

His fingers continue their spider-climb under my skirt until they reach the tops of my stockings. He caresses the naked skin of my thigh. My breath bundles in my throat. With all my being I try to say stop. Such a short word, less than a breath, but it falters on my tongue, silenced by the lifetime of lessons drummed into me that children should be seen and not heard, and that good girls do what they’re told.

I tremble so much that the bread dances in the dish. I dare not slap him away; indeed I cannot, for I’m holding on to the plate and if I let it fall I’ll catch it off Ma. Besides, everyone will look to see what the noise is about and I’ll die of mortification. When I think that I am about to burst, the strangest thing happens. I bend my head until my lips are on a level with his ear. A voice I do not recognise spills out of my mouth, quiet enough for him to hear, but none other.

‘Get your filthy paws off me,’ I growl. A confused look shadows his features. His hand freezes but does not withdraw. ‘Right now.’

A smirk worms its way across his lips.

‘Or what, my little pet?’ he leers.

‘Or what?’ I fill my lungs with cleansing breath, and continue. ‘Pin back your bloody ears and listen. I shall watch you, every moment of every day. I shall bide my time. One night, when you’ve dropped your guard, I’ll take my knife, the one I use for chopping this bread so nice and neat, and I shall slide it between your ribs. And when you fall gasping to the floor I shall unbutton your greasy britches, grab your wizened meat and two veg and saw off the whole damned lot.’

I straighten up in a leisurely fashion. He draws his hand away from my leg and tucks it into his trouser pocket as if it has been there all evening. Around us, men sip beer. We stare at each other, blankly as strangers do. He swallows heavily, staggers to his feet, stutters an apology and hastens away, leaving tracks in the sawdust. I follow him to the door and watch him scurry down the street. He stops, slings a look over his shoulder and disappears around the corner.

‘What’s up with him?’ asks Ma.

‘Who?’

‘You know very well who. You scaring off my customers?’ she says.

I hitch my shoulders lazily. I carry the bread around the room, offering it with a perfect smile. When the plate is empty I return to the bar, where I set it down without so much as a rattle.

That night I stretch on my bed, staring into the shadows where the wall meets the ceiling. I’ve no idea who planted those words in my mouth. I’ve never spoken like that before. Yet tonight, I did. I answered back. I said no. Maybe this is the strength of which Nana.

GNOME
1901

At last. She is standing up for herself. Good thing too. I was beginning to think she was as much use as a dog with one leg. Of course, it took plenty of help from yours truly, but I’m not the boastful sort. Nor have I any desire to squander more brain matter than absolutely necessary upon my sister. There are more important things to worry about.

Top of the list is just how far Reg and his minions have put the wind up me. The last thing I want to admit is that I’m too scared to go to Shudehill, but facts are facts and I may as well swallow them, thorns and all. I stick close to home, prowling the confines of my neighbourhood. I tell myself I am still King of the Night, even if my kingdom has shrunk to the size of a postage stamp. Tell myself this is better than nothing at all, that I am biding my time before I return to the site of my defeat. No, not defeat. I’m simply a wise general who knows when to advance and when to retreat; when to strengthen home defences before venturing abroad on far-flung campaigns. I tell myself this is consolidation.

Weeks slide into months, which stretch into a year, and I wonder if I’m fated to spend my life pacing this grimy cage. No lion ever chafed so against his bars, or roared so disconsolately at the injustice of his imprisonment. I can’t go on like this. A lad’s needs are manifold and I itch to stretch my legs.

First off, this hair will have to go. I let Edie grow it long and look where it’s landed me. This is what happens when you let kindness and consideration get the better of you. A little lad can get away with curls, but I’m fourteen and that’s not little, not by a long chalk. We are growing up. Time to get shot of childish things.

The scissors swish as curls pile around my ankles. On my head they looked gold, but on the floor they are as tarnished as old leaves. It’s a trick of the candlelight, a trick of the heart that sneaks in and whispers that I am cutting off more than hair. I grit my teeth and finish the job. With each snip, the true Gnome emerges, untrammelled by floppy fussiness. It’s hard to shear a straight line and I look like a badly plucked goose when I’m done, but nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of progress. I feed the dead hair into the mouth of the range and savour the smell of burning.

The kitchen door swings and in stomps Mam, drawn by the stink. She’s in her nightdress, face wrinkled from the pillow. She blinks a powerful number of times, like it’s hard work to fit me in. I can’t tell if she’s going to chuck a saucepan or take me to her bosom.

‘That’ll put the cat amongst the pigeons,’ she says, nodding at my haircut.

‘Want me to look like a lass?’

She chews the inside of her cheek while she tries to work that one out. I break the silence before her eyes pop.

‘How about you sit down. Let me make my dear mam a brew.’ I slide the kettle on to the heat. ‘Work your fingers to the bone, don’t you?’

‘Hmmph. Someone has noticed,’ she says in a voice that splits down the middle like a bit of kindling. ‘Finally.’

‘Not right, is it?’ I pour a cup and stir in a hill of sugar.

‘No.’

‘Good thing I’m here, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ she mutters, and slurps the best cup of tea this side of the Pennines. ‘No one knows how hard I slog.’

‘Except for me.’

She gawps fondly. ‘Except for you.’

‘That Edie, eh?’ I sigh.

‘I’m a fool to myself,’ she says, and gives me a soppy grin.

Now that I have her where I want her, I chatter how I barely get a minute to myself; how I’d love to step out; how lads need to stretch their legs or grow into wet nellies. Mam nods and shakes her head by turns.

‘Ah,’ I sigh. ‘If only I had thruppence for a bag of sweets.’

That’s all it takes for her to divvy up a handful of coins. I let her pinch and kiss my cheek, which is worth another handful, till my pockets are freighted with a small king’s ransom.

‘All I ever wanted was a good lad like you,’ she snuffles.

Before she can blub her silly eyes out, I blow her a farewell kiss and take the first tram heading into the city. I’ve better things on which to spend the fare, so I travel in style, hanging on to the bars at the back. Sparks fly as steel grates against steel, fine as any firework show.

I pull faces through the window. The passengers do their damnedest to ignore me, burying their noses into the evening papers to blot out the scruffy tyke cadging a free ride. I’ve half a mind to squirm through the window and turn cartwheels, but I’d be out on my ear. There’ll be plenty of time for hilarity when I get where I am going, I promise myself. As the tram slows for Shudehill, I leg it into the crowd.

I make a cautious tour of the aisles, cap pulled down to my chin. I’ve sprouted an inch and I bet I could take Reg on and trounce him good and proper. However, only a fool wastes his vigour on fisticuffs and I’m relieved to find neither hide nor hair of that particular gentleman. I take an invigorating breath and shove my cap to the back of my head.

This is where I should be: at the centre of things, where my ears din with clatter and clank. To my right, a raggle-taggle band blow trumpets, bang drums, scrape fiddles. To my left, an organ-grinder grinds. Straight ahead, the lads and lasses of the monkey-rank shout and laugh and waltz into taverns arm in arm. I am tugged this way and that, tempted by the barking of tripe-shop owners, fried-fish vendors and oyster-sellers. It’s the bustling, clanging symphony of this city and I love it: the rub of tweed on wool, of silk on serge, and all of it scented with coal dust and horse-shit and pepper and sweat and oil and electricity.

I need no penny paper when I have this. Murder, highwaymen and horrors come a poor second to these wonders. I am on the brink of manhood, with a taste for the salty, the savoury, the spicy. I appreciate things my childish self could neither understand nor appreciate.

Now that I have established the coast is clear, it is time to find some folk to fall in with. I spy a knot of likely fellows at a fried-potato stand, all of them smaller than yours truly. I can read boys faster than my A, my B and my C and this lot are floundering at the periphery of the action, clearly in need of a commanding officer. I saunter to their rescue.

‘Hey now!’ I cry. ‘You scrawny little shitwipes. I’ve not seen you in a donkey’s age.’

Before they have a chance to scratch their verminous noggins and ask who I am, I dead-arm one of the shortest with a sly blow. We share a laugh at his expense, watching him pirouette, piping ow ow over and over and threatening all kinds of punishment he is unlikely to deliver.

‘Coo,’ declares one. ‘That’s a jolly jape.’

‘You got Cyril good and proper,’ chirps another.

Cyril rubs his funny bone and shoots me a murderous glance.

‘That’s just for starters,’ I say. ‘Plenty more where that came from.’

I glance about and my eye falls on an effete youth who looks like he’s stepped off the wall of an art gallery. I imagine the picture: Narcissus Clothed, reclining on his elbow and regarding his fat face in the water. On his arm is a girl with skin as pale as that on a tapioca pudding.

‘Look at him,’ I jeer, jerking my thumb over my shoulder. ‘Those trousers. So baggy he may as well be wearing a skirt.’

I wink at my new pals, sneak behind the milksop and punch his elbow. It is so easy that it hardly counts as sport.

‘I say!’ he quacks, inspecting the numb limb.

‘Pansy!’ I yell. ‘Flapping about like a big girl’s blouse!’

I wait for his face to fold, the tears to fall. He raises his uninjured hand to shoulder height and for the space of a breath I think he is going to slap me. But he sweeps his fingers under the flowing curtain of his hair, flips it back and stares at me down his long nose. His lips tweak in a half-smile and I hear his thoughts, clear as the cry of a coal-heaver.

You piece of dirt. When you leave here, you’ll tramp to your broken home on your broken street in your broken boots to eat supper with your broken teeth. I shall hop into a brougham and be whisked away to a grand place you’ll never know.

I hold my smile steady, but it is the greatest weight I’ve ever lifted and near breaks my chin to keep it there. I poke out my tongue and blow a raspberry. His lass sticks her nose in the air.

‘What a low class of person frequents this place,’ she declares.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ drawls the aesthete. ‘Vulgar folk are so fascinating.’

She clings to her limp companion, devouring him with eyes so ravenous you’d think them organs of digestion.

‘No point casting your hook at him, love,’ I shout as they flounce off. ‘Looks like he couldn’t raise a smile.’

‘I can never understand how these chaps have always got a pretty girl in tow,’ grumbles one of my crew.

‘Pretty?’ I sneer. ‘Peaky, more like,’ I say. ‘A skinny ghost in need of a plate of pie and peas.’ They snigger, much cheered by my observation. I shall not let that flaccid flower-boy spoil the evening. ‘As for him, what a wet herring!’

‘Nah,’ interrupts Cyril. ‘Sprat, more like.’

Their attention swings away, towards him.

‘Tiddler,’ I respond, and have them back again.

‘Stickleback,’ he says firmly. ‘Nothing smaller than a stickleback.’

I rack my brains and, in the time it takes, I lose them. Cyril rattles off a list of fishy insults and they laugh like hyenas at his feeble efforts.

‘Oh, stop it, Cyril,’ wheezes one. ‘I’ll piss myself at this rate.’

‘Too late. Already have done,’ guffaws Cyril.

He makes a show of walking in bow-legged circles, kicking make-believe droplets off his clogs. He wears such a pained expression that the whole lot of them lean against each other, cackling. I don’t know why everyone is paying him such mind. He’s not that funny. Besides, Cyril is minced mutton of a name, in my opinion.

I point out an ice-cream cart and stand everyone a twist of hokey-pokey, with much flourishing of my largesse. It’s a race to gobble the stuff before it soaks through the paper, and some of us are more proficient than others. Me, I like the sensation of ice trickling down my fingers. I draw out the eating of it to such a marvellous degree that I make a mess of my shirt from collar to cuffs. Cyril nods at me.

‘You’re going to cop it off your ma,’ he observes.

‘Take the broom to you, she will,’ says another. ‘That stuff’s murder to get out.’

‘You’ll not sit down for a week.’

I shrug and wipe my lips on my sleeve for good measure. ‘My mam does exactly what I tell her,’ I reply with a haughty air. ‘Mam! Scrub my cuffs! That’s what I say.’

‘As heck as like,’ scoffs Cyril.

‘You don’t know my mam. I shall stride in and declare, Mother! I have a job for you! Wash my shirt!’ I hitch my thumbs behind my lapels and puff out my chest.

‘What a windbag you are,’ says Cyril.

‘That’s not the half of it,’ I continue, rather wishing he’d button his lip. ‘Be quick about it! Chop chop!’ I make a pantomime of an old dame, one hand pressed to my back and tugging my forelock. ‘Yes, Gnome!’ I squawk. ‘As fast as ever I can, Gnome!’

They giggle, as much out of nervousness as awe. I do not care if they take me for an empty-headed boy, all hot air and nothing else. I’ll not be outdone by a midget like Cyril. There’s room for only one Caesar and I wear those laurels.

We plough on, avoiding the slip and slide around the cow-heel stall. Drawn like wasps to jam, our promenade carries us past a confectionery stand. I eye the jars of wine gums, slab toffee, liquorice, Pontefract cakes and coltsfoot rock. The ground crunches with sugar. The girl weighing out the sweets has a starved look: chewed-down nails, hair draggled in sticky ringlets.

‘How about a lollipop, miss?’ says Cyril, poking his tongue against the inside of his cheek in a suggestive fashion.

I groan and roll my eyes. That’s not how to get a handful of mint balls without paying. Her cheeks flush and she fiddles with the bun on the back of her head, where some tendrils of hair have worked loose.

‘You look sweet,’ I say. That’s the way to do it.

Cyril throws me a pitying look. ‘I’ve got a stick of rock if you fancy a gobble,’ he adds, louder.

‘Ooh,’ says one of the younger boys.

‘Now there’s a thing,’ says another.

‘Hur, hur,’ a third.

‘You buying, or wasting my time?’ the girl trills pertly. ‘No money, no service.’

She serves half an ounce of coloured sugar to an urchin who looks too young to be out, and a quarter-pound of cough candy to a fellow in a leather apron who calls her Maggie.

Cyril makes a snorting noise. ‘Name as plain as her face.’

‘You’ll get nothing if you talk to her like that,’ I say.

‘Who says I want to get my hands on her pear drops?’ He shakes his head. ‘You young ’uns don’t know the first thing—’

‘Young! I’m twice your age.’

‘Nah,’ he says with an appraising glance. ‘You’ll understand when your balls have dropped.’

‘Better than being a short-arse.’

He yawns and stretches his arms. ‘You lot can stay here and spoon with ugly lasses if you want. I’m getting bored.’

He saunters off, shooting a wily grin over his shoulder. His sheep follow, one by one. Maggie watches his cock-of-the-walk strut with something approaching wistfulness. The last lad to desert me tugs my arm.

‘You coming?’

‘I’ll follow when I’m ready,’ I declare.

I’ll be damned if I’ll be a rat trundling after that particular piper. I’ll show him. I’ll get half a pound of humbugs out of Maggie, so I will, and share it with them all, except ruddy Cyril. Then we’ll see what’s what and who’s who. Maggie weighs out an ounce of monkey nuts for a pair of lovebirds. I take off my cap and, hugging it to my chest, furnish her with my nicest smile.

‘What a rude boy,’ I chirp with a virtuous expression that’d shame the angel Gabriel. ‘I wouldn’t address a young lady so.’

‘You still here?’ she says with a glare that could curdle milk.

It’s Cyril she ought to be angry with, not me. Female thinking. It’s got me stumped. I gear up to give her a piece of my mind when my eye is drawn to a lady hovering over the table.

It may have been months and months ago, but I recognise Jessie, the woman who tipped the scales in my favour over that nasty business with Reg. She’s dressed in fusty taffeta and on her feet are velvet slippers trimmed with beads around the toe. They’ll last a couple of weeks, I muse; if she steps into a puddle, a lot less.

I buck up considerably. I draw closer, full to bursting with tales of my new cronies, when I notice how queerly she is behaving. She points at a dish of treacle toffee, yet as soon as Maggie prepares to weigh a portion, she interrupts.

‘No, not that!’ she says. ‘Here now!’

She indicates the sugared almonds, as if they’re what she meant all along. When the jar is lifted for approval she shakes her head.

‘Dear me, no,’ she says. ‘Not the almonds.’

She waggles her fingers in the direction of a canister of humbugs. As she does so, the long tippets of her muff dangle across the table and obscure what she’s doing with her other hand. Calm as you like, she is plucking chocolates from the shelf and sliding them into the side of her skirt, secreting them in what must be a hidden pocket. With a grunt, Maggie hefts the humbugs.

‘No, no!’ pouts Jessie, tossing her head. The flowers on her hat tremble with indignation.

Now she wants the barley sugar. What a pretty glove she wears on her right hand: crimson leather with emerald stitching, bright as a banner. Only a philistine would pay attention to her light-fingered left hand when distracted by the display of the right.

Maggie scowls at this tiresome female who can’t make up her mind. She remains polite, for the customer is always right, even if they spend an age choosing between an ounce of Everton mints and an ounce of liquorice. Jar after jar is proffered, to pretty shakes of the head. All the while, Jessie fills her pocket with steady grace, stealing the sweets as if she has a claim to them.

Finally, she decides upon the treacle toffee, the very thing she started with. While Maggie weighs out two ounces, Jessie extracts pennies from the embroidered purse hanging on her arm. She accepts the twist of paper and inclines her head in thanks before gliding away. She cocks her elbow and turns out her toes, kicking them to each side so that passers-by may glance down and remark on the trimness of her ankles. I follow her along the line of tables and draw up alongside.

‘Give us a toffee, missus,’ I say, just loud enough for her to hear.

She looks down her nose. ‘In your dreams. Hop it, you little twerp.’

‘Give us one of those chocolates, then.’

‘What chocolates?’ she says with a dangerous tilt of her eyebrow.

I slide closer and pat her skirt, which crackles with something very like brown paper. She must’ve lined the pocket.

‘That’s clever,’ I say. ‘So they don’t melt.’

‘Shut up,’ she hisses.

‘You must have quarter of a pound in there,’ I continue. ‘You won’t miss one.’ I jerk my chin in the direction of the confectionery stand. ‘Maggie will, though. Sooner or later. Specially if I tell her.’

She looks me up and down, swinging her purse on its chain. ‘You’re a cheeky toad. I’ll give you one and no more. Not here, though.’

‘Course not,’ I say with a grin. ‘I’ll stand you a cup of tea. Fair exchange is no robbery.’

She brays laughter. ‘Charmed, sir. Quite charmed.’

I crook my elbow. She laughs again, gently this time, and places her scarlet glove upon my arm. As we proceed through the market hall I have the odd sensation of being a tugboat pulled up alongside a freighter. I spot Cyril and the lads, treat them to a roguish wink and am gratified to see their silly mouths flop open as they get an eyeful. I may only come to her shoulder, but I’m in the company of the finest lass in Shudehill and that trumps anything that Cyril can muster. No one’s ever going to get the jump on me again. Never. And certainly not a worm like him.

At the tea-stand I order two cups and slap down sixpence, chest puffed up with pride. The tea-man leans across the counter and fills up our mugs.

‘Got yourself a new bully, Jessie?’ he says with a chuckle.

She barks a quick, businesslike laugh. ‘Him? He’s my bonny lad.’

She puts her arm around me and squeezes. I don’t push her away; not this time. It’s over as fast as a sneeze, so it’s not like anyone notices. She shovels spoonful after spoonful of sugar into her cup.

‘You’ll suffocate that tea,’ I say.

She takes an enthusiastic slurp. ‘The cup that cheers,’ she declares. ‘Well, now. A gently brought-up lady such as myself ought to be formally introduced to a gentleman before she takes tea with him, don’t you think?’

‘Indubitably,’ I reply, warming to the theme. ‘Yet I see no appropriate soul upon whom I may call to accomplish such a task. Should I go? Must we part so soon?’

‘That would be a pity,’ she sighs.

With her index finger she taps her chest, as though sounding out the heart beneath the bodice. There’s a light in her eye that suggests she’s used to playing games, but rarely of this sort. I raise my cap.

‘You have forgotten. We are already acquainted, fair damsel.’

‘We are?’ She looks me up and down, appraising me as keenly as she would a fur coat for moth-holes.

‘You came to my aid, many moons ago, when I was sore affrighted and in need of succour.’

‘Oh my Lord. You’re that Little Lord Fauntleroy. You’ve had your hair cut. Aww, what a crying shame. I liked those curls.’

‘Get away,’ I grunt, but not harshly. I am having too much fun to be out of sorts. ‘May I make so bold as to effect my own introduction?’

‘How presumptuous,’ she says with a grin, fanning her cheek with her glove. ‘See my maidenly blushes.’ Her face is unruffled.

‘Madam, miss, my lady,’ I say, doffing my cap. ‘I am your humble servant, Gnome.’

‘What sort of a name is that?’

‘Mine, and none other.’

She laughs. It is a surprisingly delicate sound.

‘Gnome it is. Charmed, Sir Gnome. And I am Jessie.’

‘I know. It is my absolute favourite name for a lady. Now give me a ruddy sweet.’

‘All in good time.’

‘Now’s a good time.’

She sets down her cup. ‘You’re a caution, that’s for sure.’

‘Sure as eggs is eggs.’ She offers the bag of toffee and I shake my head. ‘Not so fast. Don’t give me second best. Chocolate, we said.’

‘Chocolate, you said.’

‘Chocolate!’

She rolls her eyes, slips a hand into the concealed pocket and draws out a paper bag. I make a grab for it but she holds it out of reach.

‘Now, now,’ she chides. ‘Didn’t your mother teach you how to behave?’

‘What mother?’

She gives me a careful look, unscrews the mouth of the bag and with great reluctance hands one to me. I snatch it before she can change her mind and cram it into my mouth. Syrup laced with cherry liqueur oozes down my chin.

I shove out my hand. ‘Go on,’ I say stickily. ‘Give us another.’

‘Not on your life!’ she says. ‘I’m not wasting high-class confectionery on the likes of you. That went straight down without touching the sides.’

‘So?’

‘There are some things in life best served by taking your time.’

‘Like what?’

She leans on her fist and grins. ‘No, I don’t think you’re ready.’

‘I am!’

‘Really?’

‘Really!’ I cry.

‘Be a good boy, then.’ I nod furiously. She waggles her fingers like a magician, dips into the bag and draws out another chocolate. She waves it a tantalising inch in front of my mouth, little finger cocked. ‘Open wide.’ I stretch my lips to their fullest extent. She pops the confection inside. ‘Slow down. No chewing.’

‘How can I eat it without chewing?’ I mumble.

‘Leave it on your tongue. And wait. And if needs be, you wait a bit blinking longer.’ She pauses, and stares at me dramatically. I hold still. ‘Wait,’ she says. The chocolate softens. ‘Wait.’

I obey. The centre dissolves, flooding my mouth with violets. It is the most delicious thing I ever tasted.

‘Oh, Jessie,’ I say.

She tips back her head and guffaws. There’s a band of dirt around her throat, but it’s the prettiest throat I’ve ever set eyes on.

‘Didn’t I tell you? You can take your angels and your harps and you can stick them. If there’s no chocolate in heaven then I’m stopping here.’ She drains her mug and slaps it on the counter. ‘I’m off,’ she declares. ‘It’s been a pleasure, Sir Gnome.’

I scamper to her side. ‘Wait,’ I gasp. ‘Let me walk you home. Go on.’

‘Home? I should cocoa. I’ve got work to do.’

‘Oh.’

Her gaze dances across my face, soft as feathers. ‘Penny for them?’ she says, peering down at me.

‘Nothing important,’ I mutter. A brainwave strikes. I turn out the contents of my pockets. The fortune glistens. ‘I’ll give you all of it. You don’t need to work.’

She stretches her hand across the space between us. I think she’s going to take the coins, but she runs her forefinger along the line of my cheek with a leisure that intimates she has all night to execute the gesture.

‘Bonny lad,’ she murmurs.

While I’m gulping air, she bids me a ladylike adieu and swirls away.

I sway home, head swimming like a chap with five pints of mild in him. I reflect on my new friends and it strikes me that of them all, the only name of which I am sure is Cyril. I push aside the uneasy thought and return to Jessie, a far more cheering proposition. There’s a sparkle in my chest that wasn’t there before. My shoulders prickle as though wings are budding, on the brink of breaking free. I’m growing into a man, so I am. What other reason could she have for supping tea with me?

There’s a commotion up ahead and I fly in its direction, like iron shavings to a magnet. I’m not the only one taking an interest and have to wriggle through a thicket of bodies to get to the front. The new tram-tracks at St Mary’s Gate have barely been laid a month and there’s already some idiot got his boot wedged in them.

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