“I thoughtour mother was dead,” he said.
Rosie nodded distractedly. “For years,” she said as she tucked the knife into her jeans and unlocked the back door. “You wouldn’t remember, even though it was your fault, because you were only a baby.”
Had Harry, somehow, been responsible, Joe wondered? The thought stuck in his throat like a bone, but Rosie’s conviction that this was all Joe’s fault somehow madehim wonder.
“Are we going to her grave?” he asked. The words slurred on his tongue, and he tightened his grip on his bloody arm. “I need to go to the hospital first.”
“It’s fine,” Rosie said blithely. “It’s only a scratch.”
She pulled him out of the back door and down into the garden. A swing creaked gently as it swayed, and music played tinnily from behind one of the fences.
“Hey,” Joe yelled,or tried to. “Help. I’m hurt!”
“Stop that,” Rosie hissed. She pulled the knife and pressed it against his thigh, so close to his balls that he flinched. “Nobody is going to hear you anyhow. They’re all old around here. Old people who mind their own business. But if you don’t shut up, I’ll cut you open. Then you won’t ever see Mum again.”
Joe bit the inside of his cheek.
There was a car parkedat the bottom of the garden, parked on a half-crumbled concrete slip that let out onto a narrow alley. Rosie dragged him to it and opened the boot.
“Don’t,” Joe protested. The old fear hit him, sharp as knives and hot enough to burn, as he tried to pull away from her. She dragged him back, stronger than she looked, and shoved him awkwardly into the narrow space. An old pair of muddy boots duginto the small of his back and he couldn’t breathe. He grabbed at the edge of the boot to try and pull himself out, but she rapped his knuckles with the butt of the knife. “Rosie.Daisy.Please, you don’t have to do this. Okay? I won’t tell anyone.”
“That’s what Mum said,” she told him as she folded his legs in and up. “After we drove off the road, she told me that she wasn’t angry at me, thatnobody ever had to know I’d grabbed the wheel. That’s what mothers are meant to do—protect their children. Except then she told on me when that policeman went to hand you to me, told him it was my fault. It was an accident, Joseph. That’s what everyone said, a tragicaccident.”
“Please?” he begged raggedly as his chest tightened up. “Rosie. Daisy. What did you do?”
She reached in and strokedthe side of his face. “Nothing, didn’t you listen? It was anaccident,” she said. “I never meant to hurt Mum. That’s not why I grabbed the wheel. All I wanted was for her to listen to me for once. But then she couldn’t even hear me because you wouldn’t stop screaming. You always had to have all the attention—from Mum, from Harry, even from that policeman in his big car. If you’d shut up, maybehe would have saved Mum instead of you. Did you ever think about that? I could have grown up with a mum and been normal. Instead she died, and look at us. We’re awful. That what I’ve realized, Joe. We should have both stayed in the car, with her.”
Joe grabbed at her arm and left bloody prints all over her neat white blouse, but he wasn’t strong enough to hold on. She pulled free and slammed theboot down.
“I was too scared back then,” she told him through the metal. “But this time, we’ll both go. Together. Mum will like that.”
Panic closed in on him like teeth, a pressure against his ribs and hips, and he screamed as the car started. He kicked at the metal walls and sucked in lungfuls of air that couldn’t be as hot as the claustrophobia tried to tell him it was.
It turned out Rosiewas right. No one on her small, neat street wanted to get involved. Joe eventually—quickly?—ran out of steam. He rolled onto his side, the old boots tucked against his stomach, and tried to keep up the pressure on his arm.
Although he wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not. Maybe he should let it bleed out before Rosie lit the match.
