As soon as Pin’s gone Mouse grabs the doll from the sill and holds him to his chest and blurts defensively in one breath, ‘Dad says we should always try to hold out a hand, to anyone, no matter what, to increase the amount of kindness in the world and it’s always worth the effort and it may, actually, help, all right?’ He gulps a breath. ‘So don’t get cross.’
A long quiet. Soli says okay. She sits down carefully on the bed as if she’s very old and tired and her body won’t work properly any more. She says she’d like Tidge to tell her everything he knows about this new friend. ‘Everything,’ and there is viciousness in that word. Tidge sits beside her. Begins.
Right. Well. It couldn’t be much worse.
Pin’s father is cemented into the heart of the government. He works for the Interior Office.
‘What’s that?’ Tidge asks.
‘Jails, detention, stuff like that,’ Soli replies. ‘The Official Truth Commission. The Department for Historical Clarification. All those places where people get taken away and never come back.’
Mouse shrinks into a curl on the bed. Tidge talks on. Pin is now staying in this place for protection because his old house is a target and his father has a complicated past, he was a doctor but now he’s not.
Ah yes, yes, you know of him. A man obsessed by violence, an extreme but not uncommon example of clinicide. Doctors who kill. God. Could it be any worse? One of that esteemed coterie of medical practitioners involved in their country’s murderous pasts. His historical colleagues: Jean-Paul Marat, Mengele, Papa Doc Duvalier, Radovan Karadzic and, cult notwithstanding, Che Guevara. And what, exactly, attracted them to the profession in the first place? The power over life or death? This man, early on, was notoriously involved in the slaughter of twelve men, in a single room, with sledgehammers. And what, precisely, is the thought behind that? You whimper as your son talks, you whimper, cannot stop.
Pin’s been kidnapped before, abduction’s now rampant in your country and he’s a bargaining chip and he spends all his time quarantined as a consequence. ‘He’s like this hidden-away prince,’ Tidge says, eyes wide. His father has an intractable hatred of people like us; Pin, apparently, does not. And you know what? He could be a way out!’ He says excitedly.
Mouse shoots bolt upright. His response is vicious and fast. ‘Yes. We want our home and our parents back, but with his help? I don’t think so. We can never trust someone like that. The grown-up must have leaked into him. He must have been stained by the hate.’
But Tidge ambles on. Pin has promised to keep the secret of their hiding place so long as he can muck around with them, whenever he wants; he’s worked it out, he’s telling his guards he’s off for a swim, every day, and he’s so excited about having brand-new people, kids, at last, in his life.
‘Those people kill people like us,’ Mouse says.
‘But we kill them,’ Tidge responds, matter-of-fact. ‘We might as well trust him, dude, it’s in his face. It’s a face that’s incapable of—’
‘Stop,’ Mouse cries, covering his ears. ‘Stop, you idiot, stop.’
Between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.