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talk again. He had, the neurologist responsible for his care told Polly – who told Alison – some residual brain function. It wasn’t that there was only random electrical activityin there, but there was – realistically – no possibility of a recovery or even improvement in his condition. No doubt if he had got there as a result of a car crash or a catastrophic aneurysm there would be family sitting at his bedside, trying to get through, playing him music or holding photographs up to his face. Talking to him, and holding his hand.
    The gunshot had blown away half of his brain, damaging the part governing his motor functions, and the centres of speech. He responded to sound by increased agitation, and although they tried him with various computer devices, joysticks that could be operated by a single finger, or eye movement, he showed no ability to process or answer questions.
    The inquest, Polly told Alison over her shoulder one night while at the kitchen stove, had decided that although the evidence that John Grace killed his wife, son and twin daughters, and attempted to kill himself, was overwhelming, as he was definitively unfit to plead the CPS decided no public interest would be served in proceeding with a prosecution. Alison’s interest would not be served. She didn’t tell Alison anything else: they lived for some time without watching the television news, and Polly didn’t get a newspaper. You couldn’t stay away from them altogether, though, how could you? How could you know that the front-page photograph of a man in a hospital bed – the paper carelessly left in the doctor’s reception area or standing on the garage forecourt – would be your dad?
    They didn’t talk about it. About why. She could guess – she couldn’t stop herself – at the usual reasons. If she’d asked for information, Polly might have turned off the gas ring and sat down at the table and told her anything she wanted to know, although she wouldn’t have liked it. But Alison didn’t want to know, and when the sad-eyed psychiatrist with the drinker’s face probed her gently she only hardened her position. ‘I don’t have to know any of it,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be helping me? The less I know, the more normal I am.’
    Thewoman’s face sagged. ‘What’s normal?’ she said, game but hopeless. ‘We don’t have to be normal.’
    The week after she turned eighteen, though, Alison asked Polly for the details of the unit in which her father was being held – now a secure ward, for his own protection as much as anyone else’s, in the grounds of a large psychiatric hospital – and went to see him.
    It was a hot day, in early July. The nurse who looked up from the reception desk at Alison’s arrival and walked with her down the wide corridor, its polished blue linoleum gleaming, to the room where her father sat, showed no sign of horror or pity, for Alison or her father. She was broad and cheerful, with clean strong hands. She addressed John Grace as though he could understand her, leaning over him to adjust a tube. As if he was a human being; something inside Alison came untwisted painfully as she watched the nurse’s gentle familiarity. ‘You’ll see his eyes water,’ the woman said, straightening. ‘He’s not crying, it’s just damage. To the nerves supplying the tear ducts. He’s not in pain.’
    She left Alison alone with him. As the door closed behind her Alison wondered why they trusted her not to harm him, and something weird happened, a ringing in her ears, a dizziness. She stood very still, for fear she’d fall. In the chair he didn’t move; eventually she took a breath, and a step. There was a bed with a hoist over it in the corner of the room and the nurse had pulled up another chair for her, close to his. She sat.
Dad.
She didn’t say it, she didn’t touch his hand or ask a question or say that word, the word that would identify her. It was all she could do to contain the terrible