A VOICE IN Sharns’s tortured head told her she should go home now. Get out of the bar she was standing in, laughter all around her at this hour, past midnight, of the same families of criminal hard-arses whose numbers were too many for the law to have locked up all at once. People even she knew society would be a better place without. For they never changed, they never contributed, only sucked blood and more blood. The voice asked then: So why do you keep this company, Sharns? You’re better than that.
The voice sounded like Alistair’s, but a grown, more mature Alistair. It told Sharns, Even if you’re struggling to cope with life yourself it is not your child’s problem. Even as you stumble and lurch in your sorry, sad state, don’t let the child suffer, too. Don’t, Sharneeta, don’t do that to your own child or what hope is there?
But she fought the voice, even gave it the name of Alistair in her tormented head and told him to go away, leave her be. If this is how she was going to live her life, in denial, rejection of her own child, then so be it. She lost herself deeper in the (dark) forest of music and human sounds all around her.