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better when you listen to it. Take Johnny Cash: a lot of his songs seem to be about how he’s killed someone, and now he’s in prison, having a bad time but deserving it. I like those ones. Last year in art, we had to do still-life painting. Most people did fruit and stuff, but I did murder weapons. The teacher wanted to talk to Mum after that. But they weren’t bloody or anything, it was more Agatha Christie–type things—candlesticks, a rope, poison bottles . . . (they didn’t have a gun in the art cupboard, which was a shame, as I’d have liked one). And, I mean, painting it isn’t the same asdoing it, is it? In the same way that singing about killing people isn’t at all the same thing as killing them. Johnny Cash has never actually killed anyone, as far as I know, and no one wants to talk to his mum. People can be so literal.
    Great-uncle has a lot to put up with, of course. He wasn’t always in a wheelchair. He was in a car crash a few years ago and broke his back. He was driving his car by himself and drove off the road and the car went into a wall. It was amazing that he survived at all. Ever since then, he hasn’t been able to walk, and that—if you’ve ever tried it—makes living in a trailer really difficult. They wanted to make him go and live in a house after the accident, saying he needed a bungalow without steps and you can’t have a trailer without steps, so what else could he do? Great-uncle just said he would rather die than live in a house—he wasn’t a house Gypsy and never would be. He said he had his family around him and they would manage. Although, actually, he didn’t have his family around him then: it was just him and Ivo and Christo at the time, but when Gran and Granddad and Mum found out what had happened to him, they saw that they would have to help Great-uncle, and Christo, too, so we all came back together and have been together ever since.
    That was six years ago, more or less. In fact, a lot of stuff happened around then. With our family, things tend to happen together—it’s like we’re accident-prone or something. Great-uncle had his car crash and went to the hospital for ages, and at about the same time, Ivo’s wife, Rose, ran off because they found out that Christo, who was only a baby, had the family disease. So they were all pretty bad things. Even though I was only seven, I was really sorry. Especially about Rose running off like that. I met her only once, at the wedding, but she was nice.
    When I say I met her once, it was actually a few times over several days, which was how long the wedding lasted. It was one long extended party with lots of eating and drinking, as far as I remember. I remember playing hide-and-seek with her in a pub. And I remember the funny mark on her throat; she was always putting her hand over it to hide it, which just made you notice it more. I told her that her throat was dirty and sheshould wash it, and she told me it wouldn’t come off. I stared, and she let me touch it. It was soft, like the rest of her skin, not scary at all.
    I didn’t care about the birthmark. I thought she was lovely, not like someone who would run off and leave their baby because he was ill. But then, what did I know? I was just a kid.

6.
    Ray
    Sometimes you can know too much. Of all people, I know this to be true. Ignorance is bliss. Knowledge is power. Which would you prefer? I have seen countless people walk in through our door, having, like Mr. M., chosen option B. They end up miserable, and paying me to make them so. Because they have to know. I once asked another client—a likable man—if, having found out his wife was unfaithful, he wouldn’t rather go back to living in ignorance, and he paused a long time before answering.
    “No, because there was something I didn’t know. She knew, and I didn’t. And that was stealing my life. All the time she lied to me, I didn’t have the choice about whether to stay with her or not. She had the choice and I