LITMIR.BIZ

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anyone else who could use it now, so you might as well have it,’ said Boy. He sits down beside me. ‘It was meant to cheer you up.’

      I nod, just about able to speak, and ask him to thank them for me.

      This is a terrifying awakening which embraces me like a wave that curls itself around the child at the edge of the beach and sweeps him off his feet. How much easier it is to believe that nobody cares and that I care about nobody, how much harder the truth that Boy matters to me now, and that maybe I matter to him and mothers matter to their children and children matter to them.

      ‘You’d like Angie,’ I said to Boy. ‘If she ever came back and met you, I think you’d like her.’ If.

      ‘She was a traveller?’ he asked.

      Oh yes, she was a traveller. I nodded.

      ‘And she sort of came and went?’

      Extra-ordinary, the comings and goings at The Well.

      Some sort of sixth sense woke me to the fact that we had visitors. Regardless of the age of their children, mothers have a particular way of sleeping, always on alert for the slightest of cries from the cot, the night-terror, the key in the front door and the click of heels on the staircase far later than the time we’d agreed she’d be home by. Tense, I strained my ears to hear what had woken me; I looked into the shapeless corners of the bedroom, nothing; nothing except my heartbeat and the steady breathing from Mark, curled away from me and sleeping soundly. It was constant and familiar, the thick darkness around me and I was on the point of accepting it for what it was when the room changed. A beam of light shone through the gap in the shutters, slowly sweeping the room like a searchlight and was gone. There was really only one explanation: a car at the top of the drive. Then it happened again, a son et lumière illuminating first the picture, then the mirror, then the crack where the wall and the ceiling meet, before leaving me in the audience with nothing but shadows, ill at ease and unsure if the show was over. I gave it half a minute, no more, before I shook Mark.

      ‘Mark! Mark! Wake up!’

      He woke instantly, startled. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

      ‘There’s someone out there!’

      Feeling my way around the end of the bed, I found my way to the window, opened the shutters just an inch or two and stared out into the night. There was no moon that I could see and it seemed as if the cloud must be low because even the trees were strangers.

      Mark came up behind me. ‘There’s nothing there, what are you talking about?’

      ‘Just wait a moment, will you? It was headlights, shining into the room, but I couldn’t hear anything so they can’t have driven down here.’

      ‘Are you sure?’

      ‘I’m not making it up, am I?’

      ‘I don’t know, you’re a nervous wreck sometimes.’

      ‘I felt safer when we had Bru,’ I said. We stood together in the blackness, close but not touching, waiting. ‘There! What’s that?’

      There wasn’t anything or anyone on the drive, but there was an orange glow the other side of the rise in the field between us and the road; it grew, then went out as instantly, as if someone had flicked a switch, then came on again.

      Mark opened the window and a gust of cold, damp air blew into the room. A few drops of water fell onto the window sill. It had been raining again.

      ‘Listen!’

      It was as if we had been suddenly blinded and expected to make sense of the world only through sound, random noises, devoid of context or clues. We named them as they found their way through the mist to us: a car engine, revving as if reversing or getting stuck in mud; a dog barking; a snatch of music, turned off abruptly; and finally voices, muffled and indecipherable human voices.

      ‘Who is it?’

      ‘How the fuck do I know?’ Mark reached for the light switch.

      ‘Don’t turn that on!’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because they’ll know we’re here!’ I slammed the window closed, pulled the shutters together. Mark didn’t even bother to answer, but he left the light off. He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on his jumper and jeans over his pyjamas.

      ‘What are you doing?’ I didn’t know why we were whispering.

      ‘I’m going out there!’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous! You don’t know anything about who it is. They might be dangerous. There’s obviously quite a few of them and there’s only two of us!’ I sat beside him. ‘Please, Mark. Unless we call the police – why don’t we call the police?’

      The breath sagged out of him, he put his head between his hands. ‘I don’t know. I can’t think in the dark,’ he said. ‘What’s the time?’

      I fumbled for my mobile. The illuminated screen said 12.43; my hand looked luminous under the glare. ‘What difference does that make?’

      Mark’s idea was to wait until first light and then he would go up there and see what was going on. ‘They don’t seem to want to rape and pillage straight away,’ he said.

      Part of me was relieved that we weren’t joining battle with this unknown enemy in the middle of the night; the other half of me knew that it was going to be a very, very long time until dawn.

      2.11 a.m. 2.56 a.m. 3.42 a.m. 4.29 a.m.

      ‘Ruth, where’s the phone? For Christ’s sake, where’s the bloody phone?’

      Under the duvet, that’s where it was, my hand wrapped around it, warm and safe like a new baby checked on the hour, every hour. I must have finally fallen asleep, but here was Mark, in the bedroom in his coat, yelling at me, clumps of mud falling on the floorboards, it didn’t make sense. And then I remembered the night visitors.

      I sat up in bed. ‘Oh God, have you been up there? Who are they?’

      ‘I need to phone the police!’ He chucked the pile of books from the bedside table onto the floor, turned over the heap of clothes on the chair. ‘Bloody travellers, it’s travellers parked up beyond the drive, against the hedge up there. It must have been them in the night, breaking in!’

      ‘Travellers? What sort of travellers? How many?’

      My heart gathered pace – fear of these travellers, fear of Mark, fear for Mark. His voice was rising, ‘Where’s the phone?’ He turned back to me. ‘Travellers, about a dozen, I don’t know what sort, I didn’t stop for coffee and a chat.’

      ‘How did they get in?’ I began.

      Mark interrupted. ‘God knows! I didn’t think it was possible. I haven’t checked.’

      ‘Didn’t you ask them?’

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