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Ipswich

Silvana refuses to think of Tony. She avoids walking through the park and stays away from the pet shop. It is hard to keep him from her mind, but she manages it. Every time an image of Tony comes into her head – his brown eyes, his curling black hair shiny with oil, his hands moving as he talks – she clamps down on it, concentrating on the duster she is holding or the coal she is shovelling in the small coal store in the backyard. Like a tailor using only what material they have in their hand, she fashions her life with Janusz.

‘You’re not to play with Peter any more,’ she tells Aurek one evening as she prepares their supper. She busies herself at the stove, banging saucepans together loudly, scraping at their bubbling contents with a wooden spoon, her voice rising over the noise. ‘Aurek? Did you hear me?’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’ She throws the wooden spoon into the sink and faces the boy. ‘What do you mean, why? You will do as you are told, do you hear me? He’s not your friend any more.’

She doesn’t mean to, but the way the boy looks at her, defiantly, as if she is someone to be hated, makes her lash out at him, her hand connecting with his shoulder. He staggers and falls sideways, knocking himself against the table, then scrambles to his feet, backing away from her.

‘Aurek! No,’ she says, horrified. She has never hit him. Never. ‘No,’ she cries. ‘I’m sorry.’

Aurek darts out of the kitchen, through the hall, fumbling with the front-door latch before she can reach him. She grabs the door as he opens it, trying to catch hold of him, but he slips outside into the dark evening, straight out into the pouring rain.

She knows there’s no point in going after him, but she walks the streets, splashing through puddles, the blackness of the night pressing against her eyes. For an hour she searches, although she knows it is no use. He will not come back until he is ready.

‘Where on earth have you been?’ says Janusz when she comes back into the house.

She stands blinking in the hallway, her hair dripping water into her eyes. The house smells of burnt food, and she remembers the pans she left on the stove. The kitchen door is open and she can see a pall of cooking smoke drifting just above their heads.

‘It’s Aurek,’ she says. ‘He’s outside. He’ll come back. We have to wait.’

Two hours later, there is a knock at the front door and Aurek stands there, his clothes soaked through, hair plastered smooth and dark as an otter. It’s more than Silvana can stand. She pushes past Janusz, ignoring the way Aurek shrinks from her.

‘Aurek, let me dry you …’

Janusz puts his hand out and pulls her back.

‘Leave him to me. Come on, young lad. Let’s get you dry.’

Aurek looks darkly at Silvana and then puts his hand in Janusz’s outstretched palm. He might as well have stabbed her with a knife.

Silvana sits on the top stair listening to Janusz talking to the boy in his bedroom, explaining that he must not run off. Slowly, it occurs to her that this is something she should be pleased about: the fatherly tone in Janusz’s voice, the quiet sternness. Instead she feels bereft. They don’t need her. Neither of them. They don’t need her at all.

A week later, when Aurek has still not forgiven her, he comes down with a fever. His temperature rises and by the following evening he is as floppy as a rag doll. Silvana pulls dried herbs from jars in the pantry: thyme, stonecrop, willow bark, lavender, all the plants she has gathered and dried through the summer months. She runs a cold bath and throws the herbs into it.

‘Get in,’ she tells Aurek, who is staggering weakly beside her.

Janusz stands at the bathroom door.

‘He’s shivering. Are you sure it’s a good idea? We’ve got aspirin. Can’t you give the boy some aspirin and put him to bed?’

She is not listening. Aurek is ill and it is all her fault.

‘Let me at least look after my son,’ she snaps as she lifts the boy into the bath. ‘This will bring his fever down. But I need birch bark. The fever has to be broken.