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‘Oh Soph,’ she says again.
It’d sound stupid to anyone else, but I knew she’d get it, just like I’d know she’d been knocking back the pills long before the slur hit her words.
‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’
She could always see through me too. No point covering it up, not now.
‘I got a letter. From Battlemouth.’
‘Matty. . .’
I hear it in her whisper. It’s still there after all these years, after everything that’s happened. The yearning, the questioning, the love that won’t leave. Straight away I think of the pearl-handled penknife I keep in my dresser drawer, the relief that comes from exorcising the guilt. God, I really am Pavlov’s bitch.
Buster, my dodgy hipped German Shepherd rescue, has Pavlovian reactions too. Whenever he hears a man shouting, an unexpected bang or thump.
He senses my mood, stumbles over nosing at my thigh. I rub his ears. Good dog.
‘Matty’s dying,’ I tell my mother. Not gleeful, but not sorry either. ‘Pancreatic cancer.’
‘How long?’
I shrug.
‘Couple of weeks? Possibly less.’ I take a breath, let it out slowly. ‘They say he wants to talk. To meet.’
‘A confession?’
I hear the hope in her tone, the desperate need for closure. My skin prickles. I need that too. And yet. . .
‘Maybe a confession,’ I say. ‘Though who knows with him? Last I heard, he was still saying they got the wrong man.’
‘Will you go?’
‘I’m not sure.’
A yearning for answers. The fear of getting them.
I glance down. My hand is trembling.
In it, the letter trembles too.
