I shake my head very slowly. Sister Ruth can’t understand.
‘Nobody must find us,’ I whisper.
Lena
The air just after it’s rained. The first and last squares of a bar of chocolate, which always taste the best. The aroma of freesias. David Bowie’s Low album. A curry sausage after a long night out. A long night out. The hum of a fat bumblebee. Everything the sun does, whether it’s rising, setting or just shining. A blue sky. A black sky. Any old sky. The way my mother rolls her eyes when she has a spontaneous visitor and the washing-up hasn’t been done. The old Hollywood swing in my grandparents’ garden, the way it squeaks and sounds as if it’s singing a weird song when you swing back and forth on it. Those silly tablecloth weights that look like strawberries and lemons. The summer wind on the face and in the hair. The sea, the sound of it roaring. Fine white sand between the toes . . .
‘I love you,’ he moans, rolling his sticky body off of mine.
‘I love you too,’ I say softly, doubling up like a dying deer.
‘. . . Serial rib fracture on the left-hand side involving the second to fourth ribs. Subperiosteal haematoma . . .’
Hannah
‘Are you saying you’re not going to tell me where you live?’
Sister Ruth is smiling, but it’s not a proper smile, more like half of one with just the right side of her mouth.
‘My daughter loved to play games like this when she was small.’
‘Sweet tooth.’
‘That’s right.’ She nods, pushing her cup to one side and leaning slightly further across the table. ‘And of course those games are fun. But you know, Hannah, I’m afraid it’s not always the right time for games. Like now, when it’s really quite serious. When someone has an accident and is taken to hospital, we have to contact the relatives. That’s our duty.’
I try not to blink when she looks at me in this very particular way. I want her to blink first, because that means she’s lost.
‘Sometimes, when someone’s badly injured, like your mama, we have to make important decisions.’
The person who blinks first loses. That’s how the game works.
‘Decisions that the injured person can’t take for themselves at the moment. Do you understand that, Hannah?’
Sister Ruth has lost.
‘Oh well.’ She sighs.
I put my hand up to my mouth and pinch at my bottom lip so she can’t see me grinning. You should never laugh at anyone, not even if they’ve lost a blinking competition.
‘I just thought we might have a little chat until the police arrive.’
The police are an executive organ of the state. Their task is to investigate punishable and illegal acts. And sometimes they come to take children away from their parents. Or parents from their children.
‘The police are coming?’
‘That’s perfectly normal. I mean, they have to work out how the accident happened in which your mama was injured. Do you know what “hit and run” means, Hannah?’
‘“Hit and run” describes the unlawful disappearance from the scene of an accident by a road-user after a road traffic accident which is their fault, full stop.’
Sister Ruth nods. ‘It’s a crime the police have to investigate.’
‘Does the man involved get into trouble, then?’
Sister Ruth narrows her eyes. ‘So it was a man driving the car, was it? Why do you ask, Hannah?’
‘Because he was nice. He sorted everything out and called the emergency services. And he gave me a coat when I felt cold while we were waiting for the ambulance. He didn’t actually leave until just before the ambulance arrived. I think he was just as frightened as Mama and me.’
I don’t want to look at Sister Ruth anymore.
‘And anyway, the accident wasn’t his fault,’ I say with my mouse’s voice. Papa invented the mouse’s voice for Mama’s bad days, because he thought she would get upset if we talked too loudly. ‘Mama needs her peace and quiet,’ he would always say. ‘Mama’s not feeling so well today.’
‘What do you mean, Hannah?’ Sister Ruth says. She seems to know the mouse’s voice too, because she’s speaking like this now as well. ‘Whose fault was it then?’
I have to think carefully about what I say.
Concentrate, Hannah. You’re a big girl.
‘My mama sometimes does silly things by accident.’
Sister Ruth looks surprised. Surprise is when you hear something unexpected or when something unexpected happens. It can be a nice surprise, like a present someone gives you even though it’s not your birthday. My cat Fräulein Tinky was that sort of surprise. When Papa came home and said he’d got something for me, I thought it might be a new book or a board game I could play with Jonathan. But then he showed me Fräulein Tinky. She’s been mine ever since, just mine.
‘Hannah?’
I don’t want to. I want to think of Fräulein Tinky.
‘Have you got problems at home, Hannah?’
Mama doesn’t really like Fräulein Tinky. She even kicked her once.
‘Do you have problems with your mama?’
And she’s really clumsy, no matter what Papa says. Sometimes she can’t even light the stove without his help.
‘Hannah?’
Once it was cold for more than a week at home and we froze so much we were just tired all the time. But she is my mama all the same. And when I think of her, I know that I love her. Love, it’s like happiness. A very warm feeling that makes you laugh for no real reason, even though nobody’s told a joke. The way Sister Ruth laughs when she talks about her daughter. Sweet tooth.
‘Please talk to me, child!’
‘I don’t want the police to come and take Mama away!’ I protest. That was my lion’s voice.
Hannah
Sometimes we play a game, my brother and I. It’s called ‘What does it feel like?’ We’ve been playing it for ages. I can’t remember exactly, but I think we’ve been playing it since Mama first told us about ‘happiness’.
‘Happiness is a particularly positive feeling, a state of being pleased or content, full stop.’ That’s what I read out of the thick book that knows all the answers. Jonathan nodded at first, like he always does when I read out the relevant passage. But then he narrowed his eyes and asked what it actually meant. I told him he was an idiot and he wasn’t listening properly. You always have to listen properly. Not listening is impolite. But I read it out again anyway. I mean, Jonathan is my brother, whether or not he’s an idiot. ‘Happiness is a particularly positive feeling, a state of being pleased or content.’ Then I said ‘full stop’ very slowly and very clearly, so he knew that this was the end of the passage.