[54] Blood and wounds that I saw now?

The next few months. I remember a lot, but it’s a ball of time. Emma can give you dates if you must. She has a head for dates that’s a magic trick. For anything with numbers. 1812, 1683, 1759, those ones are easy. But try 17 July 1907. No problem. She’ll tell me we had a bowl of fish soup for dinner at the Miller’s Daughter and then slept on a bench in the Plant Garden after the gate was locked, in a copse of lime trees, her head on my lap, in her blue-striped house dress and with my sweater over her shoulders. Name a date and she can recite the day for you, so what happened will never be a problem – it’s there. But why it happened? I’m no good at that, because I just don’t expect time the way she does. I’m the one she found that year to make it stop.