THOSE CHESHIRE BOYS IN tonic suits in cricket club neckties in a big borrowed car hit her Jim’s Triumph on Wilmslow Road before midnight Christmas Eve ’76. Her Jim was driving, good as sober; her Sefton beside him and already gone after an evening in the Woodpecker; both strapped in, heading for town. Those boys, Protestant sons, good jobs, plenty money, those boys were drunk and lived. While she –

got rung at witching hour, called from church to station to morgue to identify their bodies on Christmas Day.

Her husband, Jim Dodds.

Her son, Sefton Dodds.

But it was those boys not hers who healed and were redeemed.

Every night for eight and a half years Nedra had visioned the crash – every bloody night, awake or in dreams, even though she wasn’t there. Newspaper clippings whose lies lived in the bedside drawer in a used envelope with a maple leaf stamp – GANGLORD AND SON SLAIN IN XMAS CRASH; FATHER-SON VILLAINS IN FATAL COLLISION – all of which she reread by dome magnifier, which she’d bought herself one year out the catalogue when everyone, even the kids and mams on the street, forgot her birthday. Eunice used to send monthly miniature parcels of soap samples, funny brands from Freddy’s works. Nedra would test them all with tender suspicion. But now Eunice rarely sent her owt, even on her birthday, only ringing and writing sometimes, busy keeping a decent husband. At the funeral Eunice had wept constant, so barely talked the entire time they were back. Nedra cooked her allsorts but it never got touched. Not even a weak milky brew. (On burial day Nedra had swallowed her capful of vinegar at dawn, not having slept. Nedra learned ways to console herself, short and long, but didn’t know how to console others without tea – especially her daughter, nine years foreign by then. Freddy had a drop of brandy at the old house, though; or was it Lamb’s Freddy liked? They lasted two nights at the airport hotel, having insisted). And after years of trying, which Eunice stressed to her over the phone whenever Nedra asked, and Nedra asked whenever she rang: they’d no family. Her daughter, forty this year, and childless. Even with no history of barren women in the family and Nedra herself having conceived no bother, carrying Sefton, then Eunice uneventfully. Nedra had only lost the one – about five month in; a miracle bestowed upon her at fifty. She had worked up Jim over some petty business on the wrong night and, well, that was her own doing, as were the weeks of unstoppable mess and pain and private tears sometimes too spontaneous to be hidden, leading to more trouble. Besides, he’d been sweet afterwards and bought her a new Philips cooker – not even a rental. Anyroad, she had enough of them to mither with as a childminder and dinnerlady at St Christopher’s Infant School. Jim had reminded her they were both getting on and she should stop being so daft. She prayed of course.

Her husband. Her son –

while those Cheshire boys’ names got printed in the order of their fathers’ wage sum.

Those boys whose faces were at first kept from her, while her Jim’s Triumph Vitesse was shown: mangled, overturned.

Nine years this Christmas.

How can I be living and they be dead?

Awake the crash was loudest. But in dreams she was inside the car with them, cramped in the back, moving, the road empty and the night not night not day and her window already shattered and the breeze winging her hair. Beige leather creaked. Hard seats that’d had her rump aching on daytrips to Rhyl. Sometimes, in these dreams, it was her own blood soaking her seat through her layers, like that time she had lost one. Did Jim forgive her? Tonight Nedra slept in fits, riding repeatedly in the back of the Triumph to be washed with hot blood, feeling her son’s life leave him while her husband’s warmed her fat ankles as it climbed her footwell. Tonight the crash mended the windows, their glass returning to seal her in, as Jim’s blood rose till it filled the Triumph and her Dodds men sat empty-fleshed. Tonight they drowned her.

Nedra woke without a flinch –

knowing why she never forgave Carol for leaving Sefton during one of his short spells in Strangeways so that she could shack up with a fancy man who dared to raise Kelly as his own. What with her Sefton and her Jim later dying blameless and together and having since found no justice, local or otherwise. Perhaps she had never forgiven Carol for doing what she, Nedra, never could, despite also having reason to, since her Jim had a temper too and could be tempted by an indecent waddle, although for this could he be blamed? That shameless slut Minnie, having thrown herself at him. And what sort of man would he have been to turn such a thing down, after fighting a world war, after him telling her and still having it shaken under his nose? But it was only now, with a Dodds man in the house, after all those strangers invaded her home and ate her scran, after he had learned the truth, it was only now, as Nedra grew old and awake in the dark, sharing her daughterinlaw’s bed, that she knew why. Why she had never forgiven Carol for going back to her own husband, Nedra’s son; for showing her it could be done only to undo it.

Now the thing inside her that was and wasn’t pain woke too and climbed into her throat and she gulped it back down.

True –

Jim was a bugger. Sefton was a bugger.

These were witching-hour doubts; they gnawed through her, sowing sin, turning faithful hearts contrary. She waited; her heart was silent; the tightness left. But the thing inside her began to burn. It came up again and she swallowed it again. She turned over to keep it down and the old mattress complained.

She replayed the day – saw dark figures in her kitchen whenever she dared shut her eyes. If she kept them open, on the canvas of the ceiling, was the Triumph’s crash.

Carol was awake too; she knew by her breathing. She looked across the pillow and found her daughterinlaw faced away, separate, cursed. Kelly’s do hadn’t been mither for Carol who nowadays seemed immune to surprises. Was that Jan’s doing? But Carol had been that way since before her daughter had given birth. Jan had hidden her pregnancy from herself, not just them, hidden it until it wanted out of her, two month early, at which time she could foist her secret onto them. Carol had no shame or interest in her wanton, truant daughter; one might as well help the Devil shovel coals. Nedra thought of the neighbours tomorrow. But a Dodds man was home. She loved Kelly too much to have visited him inside. Tonight, Carol had said nowt to her or to him, not even with her face, not even when the do was over and Kelly knew everything. In the kitchen Carol had stonewalled him, taken his fury and made it clumsy and small, like a dropped spoon. But now with somebody sharing the dark with her, Nedra was less afraid, even if it was Carol. God had punished Carol for her adultery. God had taken her husband, Nedra’s son. Why had he taken her husband too? Father Culler once said it wasn’t for her to know. But she could tell Father Culler thought he knew the Lord’s reasons and Nedra knew he didn’t. And she finally confessed this vanity only to be given Hail Marys to spend on her soul for its penance in lieu of answers. For after eight and a half years Our Lady’s prayers had gone unanswered. Now the thing inside her rose again. A tightness in Nedra that tightened every year but could not break her. But then, after they heard Kelly through the wall, beating sense into his sister, Nedra knew she would rise early to clear away the pots. Carol could see to the rest of the house. Tomorrow as well she would write to Eunice. She had spared her from Kelly’s conviction, spared her from Jan’s fall too. Nedra suffered too well to unburden herself outside the confession box.

Nedra thought of how many her cooking had fed. And not just at the do. Nedra wished to remain useful. All her life: feeding the bottomless stomachs of the young.

Nedra let the ceiling bleed.

Her special ingredient for any dish main or sweet was vinegar.