He cannot do what Kerry has done, make a space for cotton wool under the skin, bolster the past with a new version of himself. Perhaps he doesn’t have the imagination. How did his mum do it, in the naked knowledge she was one of the bad guys? The shiny patch of skin on his wrist that never goes, the way his fingers ache in cold weather, become numb and creaky. The slip of the blood through the veins of his wrists. He’s only understood recently why they never asked for help from a neighbour or a teacher—the shame, but worse than that for him. The love for his mother.
