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Okay What I’ve heard because no one’s telling me, are they? Dad saying this regime stops people being human but Mum saying it doesn’t stop people being human it brings out the worst in them, what lies buried in everyone underneath. That we all have this animal inside us, every single human being, and Dad says, no, Mrs, not everyone, and then it’s a fight. Mum all shouty that everyone has this capacity to be inventively, viciously cruel, to any person who’s the outsiderthe threatand it’s been like that since humankind began and it will never stop and then the stories come and I crouch under the stairs winded by the listening. What grown-ups do. New-born babies put outside a mother’s cell in a bag with a starving cat. Jumping on a back until it breaks. Pigeons stuffed into mouths. Eyes gouged out with spoons. Drilled flesh. Villages gassed. Families holding tight in the centre of a room and single people at the edges by themselves. Parents forced to shoot their children as punishment. Parents forced to watch as their children’s throats are slit. Parents forced to watch as their children are starved to death. Mothers beaten by their babies until the babies are dead. Right. What grown-ups do. All of this. MUM? DAD? Are you out there? CAN YOU COME? Please come.

    So. All those scraps of late-night conversation that he’s caught in Salt Cottage when he should be asleep but he’s been listening from his cupboard under the stairs and his scream is his pen and you’re being filleted as he writes, everything that is beating and warm within you because childhood, any childhood, is not meant to be this and how does it get to this point.

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.