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I have built a tree house for Aurek and he enjoys it just as I did when I had one as a child. In fact, your grandson is more agile than I remember I ever was. I would like you to be able to see how fast he can climb the rope ladder into it. You would be proud of him.

Felixstowe

The boxes have mostly gone. The only room in the house Tony stores things in now is the kitchen, and soon everything will be gone from there too. They will be moving to London, and Tony is winding the business down as fast as he can. Silvana likes the cluttered feel of the kitchen. The rest of the house is spick and span, but the kitchen is filled with boxes of soap powder and Bird’s Custard packets. She has moved the piles of newspapers from the stairs into it. She has to squeeze past them to get to the back door.

During the week, when Tony is in Ipswich working in the pet shop, organizing the move, she spends hours sorting through the newspapers, scissors in one hand, the other turning the pages. She goes to bed late and thinks about Janusz, trying to imagine his grief, but she has too much of her own to put herself in his place.

She takes her folder of newspaper clippings up to bed with her and sleeps with it under her pillow every night. She feels like a mother hen with all those little faces under her head. The print from the pictures smudges on the pillowcase, and the children leave their features on cotton. She never washes her pillowcase because of them. So many children, but she will gather them in.

At night her hands touch the newspaper cuttings while the faint, gravelled sound of the sea and the wind outside lull her to uneasy sleep. In her dreams, the children climb out from under her hair and dance on her bed, linking hands and singing, and her own dead son rises up from his handcart grave, his blankets tumbling around him. The bedcovers are heavy with the weight of the children. All the babies, the boys and the girls, the innocent, come to Silvana, and she says sorry to each one of them. They rise up out of shallow graves, bombed houses, prison cells and eyeless forests, forgetting their pasts, free and beyond harm.

In the morning they are gone, under the pillow once more, and Silvana gets up, washes in cold water and turns her scrubbed face to the new day.

Ipswich

The windows are boarded over and a sign pasted onto the door details planning permission for a change of use. The pet shop is going to become a hairdresser’s. Janusz turns on his heels and walks briskly away. He walks on up the cobbled road and into the market square, crossing it in long, loping strides, disturbing the pigeons that settle there. He buys himself a cup of tea and a scone in Debenhams.

And if he went to Felixstowe and asked her to come back to him, what would he do if she refused? He slams his coffee cup onto the table and spills most of it. Of course he can’t go. Doris said she looked well. What did that mean? Did it mean she was in love with Tony?

In his mind, he sees Silvana with Tony and Aurek, all of them smiling at him. He grunts audibly, like he’s been punched in the head. Oh, Christ. Why is he doing this to himself? And what else? If he’s going to beat himself up, he may as well do it right.

How about Aurek sitting on Tony’s knee? That image hurts. And Aurek making a tree house with Tony, all three of them laughing at him as he asks Silvana to come home. No. He can’t go and ask Silvana to come back. She’s where she wants to be. He gets up and walks out.

He’s halfway up Britannia Road before he realizes he didn’t pay for his coffee in the café and has to walk all the way back into town to put things right.

Felixstowe

Silvana is cleaning the stove when the doorbell goes. She listens for a moment and the bell sounds again. Should she leave it? Nobody calls at this time of day. She hears the sound of knuckles rapping on the door and pulls off her apron, tidies her hair and walks into the hallway. Whoever it is will not go away, it seems. She opens the door a fraction.