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with its tears flowing down the bulb of wrist.
    I go back, and try to piece together how it was. I think there must be a design. I can picture Len the Bookie and his bet with the Syndicate (how soon my fist would echo his); the sight of my
mother hopeless in the rain; Martineau behind her, clasping his casket like Balthazar. And I think of my father, standing all the while in a room across town, knowing nothing, oblivious: always
betting more than he can afford to lose.
     
three
    In the top room of The Moonlight Joe Medora sits at his desk. He is busy. He ignores the dull applause of footsteps on the stairs, but Ilya the Pole, stationed at the window
behind Joe’s head, is twitching like a hare. Frankie knocks on the door, swings in, jutting his head through the widening crack. He parts his lips to speak, but wavers at the sight of
Joe’s bent head, the faint scratch of Joe’s pen, the ribbon of smoke curling upwards from Joe’s cigar. Frankie peers through the heavy air, seamed with bitter blue, at Ilya in the
far window. Stuck now in the doorway, Frankie’s at a loss. His left hand holds the brass knob in a twist, his right rests flat against the frame: both have started to sweat. He half expects
Salvatore to come up after him, but Frankie can only hear the faint beat of music from below, and what he thinks is the shush of Joe’s hand as it crabs across the paper. It’s his own
breath making this noise.
    Frankie eases his hold on the sweating doorknob, cutting the silence with a shriek of spring. He steps into the room. Joe Medora glances up, then down again at the page in front of him. At least
he hasn’t told Frankie to go away; nor has he raised his finger in the air, summoning Ilya to escort him off the premises. Frankie weighs it up: he’ll wait.
    A burst of rain on glass. The blind at the window scuppers in the draught; a soft bang, silence, then another bang, and down in the city, the low keening of a fire engine. If Frankie were
listening he would hear it, but Frankie is all eyes, taking in his old den, now transformed into Medora Territory.
    The square deal table with the worn green felt has gone; so too have the vinyl chairs. Instead, a fat sofa is positioned opposite the door, lustrous red and buttoned, and beside it, a glass
table with a fan of Playboy magazines and the folded pink of the Sporting Life . Frankie’s gaze wanders – to Joe’s desk filling the far corner of the room; to the
lone upright chair against the wall where Frankie could, if he was invited, sit down and rest his watery legs – until he fixes on a huge portrait of Persimmon, poised, watchful, framed in
gilt above Joe’s head. Frankie stares at the horse and the horse stares back: Persimmon wins this contest.
    ~  ~  ~
    I’ll look after the kids, Missus, you go on.
    Alice Jackson tries to coax my mother towards the ambulance, but she won’t move: she’s afraid of what she’ll find. Celesta shifts Luca higher on her hip,
catches Alice Jackson’s meaningful look. She wipes the rain from Luca’s head and steps into the small space the crowd has left around my mother.
    We can go over to the Jacksons’ for a bit, Mam, she says, wanting her to say, No, you’re all coming with me. But my mother doesn’t hear. She wends through the fold of women
standing on the corner of the street, stops when she sees the yawning door of the ambulance and the man inside bent over me. A fireman drags a hose along the pavement. She watches this. He waves
his arm out in front of him like a swimmer, shouting at the knot of children to clear a way. They’re elated, dancing on the spot, lifting the heavy hose and swinging it between their legs.
Another fireman cranks a handle on the platform, and the hose jumps to life. The children leap aside, shrieking.
    Our house is a mess, the insides sodden, a stink of plastic in the air. The kitchen is a crusted hull. The Jackson boys have set to work, and despite the angry shouts of the