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Her na, fifteen or sixteen or seventeen, it was never quite clear Julia orking in the hen she gave birth There was no father pacing expectantly in the waiting rooive the name of one There was no one in fact, no relatives, not even a friend, and afterwards, when she'd coiven her, Julia had sat and talked with her for a few minutes, held her hand, comforted her

So, too young, her li and sliirls' limbs sometimes are, her face small and neat and framed by a damp slick of dark brown hair Or perhaps broad-shouldered, with taut htly squared jut to her jaw Blonde hair, or auburn, pale brown, coal black Long hair, tied up, curled, straight, cut sensibly short around her face Brown eyes, flecked with grey Green eyes Blue eyes, a pale watery blue Sitting quietly in the bed, her chest heaving, trying to catch her breath, the curtains drawn around her and the rest of the ward quiet for a moment She was Irish, his al, and had been in London for two years, working in a big house, saving money to take back to her family She told Julia her fao back but she couldn't stay in London, she had no work, there were too many people she knew, the shame was too much Afterwards he was surprised by how easily his mother had spoken the words Her voice quivered a little, but she spoke clearly, and laid out the few facts for hi theirl asked Julia what happened to babies whose mothers left them, his mother said, and Julia told her what there was - Barnardo's, St Catherine's, social services - and the girl, Mary, said she didn't want that for a child Julia asked her what she was going to do Mary said that if she could go home she could find so, and then at least she would see you growing up Julia asked who that would be, and Mary said she didn't know, she would find someone She said she would find soht be difficult to place you in a ho a hand to her face and squeezing her cheeks, and fro sorry She breathed in sharply, put her hand down, and continued Julia always said she didn't knohy she'd done it, she said There were plenty of hard things happened in that hospital, especially then; we couldn't let it get to us Julia always said the words came out be

fore she knehat she was doing, she said He watched his ht fading through the back garden and the photos of his father looking down on theirl, Mary, she said to her, you can leave hiet back, and before she'd even finished speaking Mary had turned to her and said can I? Will you?

These things, the way they happen The way they begin So spoken So up in his cot, studying the too But he hadn't been there at all He'd been off in some other ward, a nu or stretching or wailing, waiting to be taken back to his ain, handled in a humidity-controlled room, learnt by heart It didn't matter that they were second-hand, third-hand, blurred by time and mistranslated, rubbed s These broken pieces were all he had; like keepsakes pulled fro from the cold wet earth

A young wo it's no use, I can't do it; one of the nurses turning to her, brushing her hot da yes you can, co back on to the bed, giving up, and the nurses saying her na their voices as if calling her back fro louder to block the up, even when the pain and the fear were enough to , as if her body had become so alien that she couldn't re her teeth, and doing what young woer her own Calling out for herout aeach other's eye Or perhaps even in theto herself, not out of loyalty but out of fear and an instinct for self-preservation Sla at the coldherself,quickly beneath her to clear it away, her hu at her that way, knowing the sort of girl she was, thinking only that she was paying the price and it was too late to go crying now, but not saying this,aloud, oh dear lord Jesus have -like between screa as she to turn to God at a time like this?

The nurses saying co out a cry which seems to burst from somewhere in her spine, and the baby is born and it's over Looking on in dazed confusion as the baby is lifted, cleaned, exa her to push just a little bitscooped up and re her an injection The baby being carried away, and her eyes following it out of sight before she falls into a long, dark, drugged sleep Julia didn't tell hi Soon after the day she first let the secret slip, forgetting for a moment that it was supposed to be a secret at all, she went into a sudden decline She forgot his naot Dorothy's name Eventually she seeh they always told her when they arrived, and she always s into conversation with theuely out of theHer body began to age rapidly She lost weight Her skin scrunched up into an old wo out until there were only a few loose wisps floating around her scalp like a halo Her eyes began to sink back into their sockets, and her shoulders started to round and hunch forward until she looked twenty years older than she was She rarely looked at thens of understanding what they said But even when it ca her about what she'd said

Auntie Julia, he'd say, can you reirl with the baby? What was her second naain? I can't remember Where was she from? She'd look at him, her eyes e eachor looking right past hi to catch her in one of her lucid aze back at hiarettes

I' ash into a saucer, but so nonsense, really you do

He got desperate He asked her over and over again He took photographs in to try and pro the war, of his mother and Susan, of her house Her puzzle was a ga to her feet and looking around for her coat No Julia, he'd have to tell her, it's not tio home, not just yet

There was one thing, hisJulia told irl had a bad ti to lose her, she said And it was obvious, after so many years of silence, how difficult it was for her to have told hih It was nowhere near enough Nothing she could ever have told him would ever be as much as he wanted to know, and so he started to fill the vast gaps for himself, to read books about London and Ireland, to buy ht until he could make a story, any story, to fit

Perhaps it was raining when she got off the bus, but she was already feeling better, just standing by the side of the road and breathing in the wet air Everything feeling fas on the tarmac beneath her feet The walled-in tree where the bus was turning around The frosted glassof the shop on the other side of the road The boxes of vegetables on a trestle table outside the grocers The noticeboard by the bus stop behind her

The bus turned its circle and drove back up the hill, and the place was quiet except for the water running along the gutter into the drain, a steady slurping gurgle, the sa water that she'd always known and grown up with She looked at the wet grey veils of the sky, s the dampness from her face I don't mind a bit of rain, she said, beneath her breath, and picked up her suitcase

It was nearly three miles from the bus stop to her family's house, but the rain-sodden walk seemed to take no time at all, and the suitcase which carried the last two years of her life was as light as a handful of feathers in the clutch of her fist Every step of the road was just as she'd dreamt it all the time she'd been away Every step took her further away from the smoke and the noise and the loneliness and fear of the city she'd left behind Every step drew her deeper into the hollows of the landscape, the green hills and shining rivers andinto the postcard she used to keep propped up on thehouse The rain didn't let up, and the da to her skin, the whole place wrapping itself around her, but she couldn't stop sain into the hills She was soaked by the time she was halfway home, but she knew that when she opened the door there would be a s fire, a kettle on the stove, a slab of cake in the larder She knew that the neighbours would be sent for, her brothers called in froht down from the sideboard

Perhaps she remembered with a sudden cold shiver why she was there no different this walk ht have been, how muc

h colder her reception would be then, and she knew that she'd done the right thing She told herself again that she'd done the right thing