October 1974

Ye’re not still queasy about blood, are you, lambsie? Such a worrisome little thing you were, dizzy every time you skinned your knees. Fainting at school when that boy in class broke his nose—do you remember? I had to pick you up at dinnertime and bring you home with me. I never knew what to say to make it better, because I knew how upsetting …

Jam, oh aye, that was the thing. You could always be comforted with a spoonful of jeely.

Maybe you still are that way with blood, maybe it’s a thing you don’t grow out of.

Me, I seemed to grow into it. All those years with blood up to my elbows, the smell of it in my mouth, the taste of it in my ears. Knowing it was a thing left over from life when life had gone. Maybe it was always going to catch up with me, that knowing. Because, in time, it became fear.