Please Keep Your Receipt

The supermarket gave Tobin twenty-three minutes back on a Thursday. His daughter had been waiting outside after-school care for twenty-six.

He'd promised Willa spaghetti, and she'd written it on the calendar below the faded appointment neither of them had rubbed out since Della died.

Pasta, milk, mince. At the self-service checkout the milk would not scan, and the attendant kept holding up one finger while she explained the bread reductions to another customer.

His phone vibrated again. He let it. On the screen above the card reader, a green button appeared.

WE VALUE YOUR TIME.

LET US TAKE CARE OF THINGS FOR YOU.

REFUND YOUR VISIT?

The button displayed twenty-three minutes. Beside it, a photograph showed a father lifting a laughing child onto his shoulders. Tobin thought it was credit towards delivery. His phone vibrated a fourth time. He pressed ACCEPT.

Cold fingers closed on the back of his neck.

He was lying on his side. A metal shelf rested against his temple. Someone's bare heel occupied the space in front of his mouth, the skin white and swollen, a little grey crescent of dirt caught under the toenail.

His knees struck another person's knees. Their owner did not move. Under the refrigeration motor he could hear someone breathing through a nose full of liquid.

There was a woman facing him across the heel. She had a gold tooth and one hand clamped over her mouth. Her eyes moved towards a strip of light above his shoulder.

A shopping trolley rattled overhead. Tobin opened his mouth, and the woman reached across the foot to push two fingers between his teeth. She pinned his tongue against his teeth. Her knuckles smelled of onion and bleach.

Then he was standing at the checkout. The attendant had gone. His groceries were bagged, and his phone said 5:58. A moment ago it had said 5:35.

He bent over the shopping bag and vomited into it.

A teenage employee brought paper towels. Tobin told her about the gold tooth, then stopped. He could still feel the fingers in his mouth. The rest would not stay together long enough to say.

The girl glanced at the screen.

“First refund?”

He nodded because he wanted her to tell him what had happened.

“Keep the receipt. You need it if there's a problem.”

The printer chirred. She tore off the paper and put it in his hand. Tobin left the groceries beside the machine.

Outside, he sat with the car door open until he could make himself drive. The mirror showed two parallel cuts under his tongue.

At after-school care, Willa stood beside a woman holding the office keys.

Tobin crouched and put his arms around her. She remained stiff. He felt the damp cold of her hands through his shirt.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm so sorry.”

The woman asked whether he was feeling all right.

“You brought her back. Said you'd left your wallet at the shop.”

“Brought her back?”

“She was upset. You said she'd fallen over. I was going to ring you once we closed.”

There was grit down one side of Willa's tights. A small hole exposed the skin of her knee.

“I haven't been here.”

Willa pulled away from him.

“You told me you'd say that.”

Willa sat against the far side of the back seat. Each time Tobin checked the mirror, she looked away.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You said it was a game.”

She picked at a split in the upholstery. He put the indicator on too late and a driver sounded his horn. Willa flinched, drawing both feet onto the seat.

“You said if the other one came, I shouldn't tell.”

He pulled into a service station because his hands had begun shaking too badly to hold the wheel. Willa started crying when he stopped. She thought he was taking her back.

He climbed into the rear seat beside her and kept his hands where she could see them.

“I'm not cross. Whatever happened, you haven't done anything wrong.”

She asked him to say what her mother used to call their dog.

“Captain Farts.”

Willa let out a small, painful laugh, then climbed into his lap so quickly her forehead struck his chin. For several minutes she couldn't speak.

When she could, she said the other Dad had taken her shopping. He had driven quickly, smiling at her through the mirror all the way. At the supermarket, he had taken her down an aisle and lain flat on his stomach.

“He said Mum was underneath.”

His arms tightened around Willa until she shifted in his lap; he let her move.

“She wasn't,” Willa said. “I looked. She wasn't there.”

After the funeral, Willa had asked what they would do if Mum woke up and wanted the toilet. Tobin had sat with her on the cemetery bench, trying to find words that wouldn't make it worse. Now he couldn't remember what he'd said.

A woman had reached out from beneath the shelf. Willa had thought she was going to pull her in. Then the woman pushed her backwards, hard, and told her to run.

“She had a gold tooth. Dad, she was scared of you.”

He held Willa while she described his shoe coming down on the woman's wrist. The arm bending where there wasn't a joint. His other self telling Willa to stop crying because people would hear.

At the school, he had put her out of the car and crouched beside her.

“He said next time I should bring a bag. For Mum's things.”

A pale crescent was caught in the tread beside his heel. Tobin turned his shoe towards the car's interior light. A torn cuticle hung from one end of it.

He did not touch it.

*

The police came at eight. Tobin showed them the fingernail, his mouth, the receipt. His phone's location history traced a journey from the supermarket to school and back, before the pickup he remembered.

One officer spoke to Willa in the kitchen. Tobin could hear her describing the gap beneath the shelf. She kept apologising because she couldn't remember which aisle.

The other officer asked how much he'd slept and whether he'd been drinking. Tobin answered. A widowed father, sleeping badly, losing time. He had thought the same thing in the car, before finding the fingernail.

They bagged the shoe and said they'd request the footage. Before leaving, one asked whether anyone could stay with them.

Tobin phoned his sister, Bryony. She arrived with a change of clothes and a bag of bread rolls. When she went to hug him, he stepped backwards into the hall table. He told her everything while Willa sat wrapped in a blanket, watching his hands.

Bryony stayed beside Willa that night. Tobin sat on the landing with a kitchen knife beside his foot. When Willa's door creaked, he slid it behind his leg.

At 2:17 he went to the bathroom and found a bruise running around his waist. Within it were pale straight lines, too regular to be scratches. He laid a finger along one. The ridge under his skin pivoted, turning slowly away from his touch.

The camera flash brought back the light beneath the shelf. He dropped the phone into the basin.

In the morning, Willa wouldn't let him make her breakfast. Tobin put the bread and plates down and stood beside the radiator. Bryony buttered the rolls. When Willa asked her to take the first bite, she did it without looking at him.

The kitchen window had steamed over. Della used to draw faces on it while the kettle boiled, long ridiculous chins with spots and one enormous tooth. Willa had copied her for months after the funeral. This morning she sat perfectly still, watching Bryony swallow.

At eleven, the officer called. The supermarket footage showed Tobin arriving alone, then entering again with Willa at 5:46. They left together at 5:52. Nobody had found a recording of his first exit. The school confirmed both visits. On every recording, he appeared alert.

“What about beneath the shelf?” he asked.

“You went out of shot. We're asking for the other cameras.”

The material in his shoe had been sent for examination.

“Don't go back there,” Bryony said after he hung up.

He was already searching his pockets for the receipt.

She caught his wrist. Tobin jerked away so violently that the kitchen chair fell over, and Willa began to cry. He picked it up and apologised. He stayed beside it. Willa had pulled her blanket over her face.

“Listen to me,” Bryony said quietly. “You're hurt. She's frightened. Let them do their job.”

For an hour he tried.

Then the supermarket sent a notification.

YOUR TIME REFUND IS STILL ACTIVE.

NEXT COLLECTION: 17:35.

He opened the photograph of the receipt and enlarged the small print.

Daily collection: 17:35. Duration: 23 minutes. Personal substitute included and retained by account holder between collections. Additional manual collections do not alter daily schedule. Present original receipt at issuing checkout to discontinue. All supplied material must be returned.

The first collection had been at 17:35 yesterday. Tobin read the line about retaining the substitute again, his waistband tight across the bruise. Bryony read it twice. It was 12:08.

They called the police again. The officer who answered asked them to email the image. Tobin's call to the shop went to an automated survey. On Bryony's second attempt, a woman answered and said they could cancel in person. They needed only the receipt.

Bryony put her on speaker. Tobin wrote down her name.

“I'll go first,” Bryony said. “You wait outside until I know what they want. Willa stays with Mrs Bell.”

Mrs Bell lived two doors down. Tobin wrote his number on an envelope although she already had it. Willa watched from the sofa.

“Can you stay here?” she asked.

He knelt several feet away.

“I have to stop it coming back.”

“You won't know if you stop it.”

Mrs Bell knocked. Willa turned towards the door.

*

Tobin waited outside among the lunch shoppers. Through the glass, he saw Bryony holding up the receipt. The manager nodded and beckoned.

Nothing happened when he crossed the threshold.

At customer service, Coralie checked the receipt against Tobin's account on her computer.

“We have to do this at the issuing terminal.”

He asked her what had happened to him.

“I wasn't on yesterday.”

Passing the meat cabinet, Tobin kept his eyes on Bryony's shoes. The trays made him think of last night's vomit in the shopping bag. She stopped.

“Tobin.”

In a packet of mince beside her hand was a gold tooth. The meat inside it moved.

A shallow depression opened across the pink strands. The cling film sank into it, clung for a second, then lifted.

From inside the tray came a soft whistling breath.

Tobin grabbed the cabinet to keep himself upright.

Bryony had her phone out. Coralie caught her wrist.

“Please don't record staff.”

“It's breathing.”

Coralie's fingers tightened around Bryony's wrist. She lifted the tray and turned her back to the passing shoppers, supporting its sagging middle with her palm.

The whistling became a little louder.

“Someone's put her out too early.”

She pushed the tooth into the meat. It rose again when she lifted her finger.

Bryony slapped the manager's hand away from her wrist.

“We're leaving.”

Coralie placed the tray in a red basket behind the cabinet. Tobin heard a sound from it that could have been a word.

He went towards the basket.

Coralie caught the back of his shirt and dug her thumb into the bruise above his belt. A joint straightened against it.

“You can't take her like that.”

The cold fingers returned to his neck. The tiled floor struck the side of his face and became concrete. He was on his side again beneath the shelf, his knees jammed against another body. His hand was still reaching towards the basket.

Above him, Bryony shouted his name. His own voice answered her.

“I'm fine. Stop making a scene.”

Tobin shouted. A palm slid across his cheek: the woman with the gold tooth, fumbling to cover his mouth.

Her fingers found the cuts along his tongue.

The gold tooth was missing. Blood had dried down her chin.

“Don't,” she whispered. “They'll start it.”

He pushed her hand away.

Above them, Bryony said, “Let go of me.”

Raising his head caught his ear on a metal lip. He pulled harder. Skin parted. Warmth spread down his neck.

Through the gap he could see his own shoes.

He heard Bryony demand the receipt. His own voice told her to put her phone away. A phone struck the floor, glass cracking under the impact. Through the gap he saw the toe of her shoe, then his shoes turning towards the exit.

The woman covered his mouth before he could scream Bryony's name again.

“She can't hear this far down.”

The woman dragged herself towards the darkness, biting her lower lip as her left forearm bent at the middle. She put her weight on it again.

He caught her sleeve. “I didn't do that. Please. It wasn't me.”

She looked at his hand and he let go.

Behind her hips, in the narrow space where the light did not reach, metal scraped against concrete. Her lower body jerked. She braced both feet against the upright, one wrapped in the remains of a sock, the other missing its toes.

“Hold me.”

Tobin caught her good forearm and pulled. For an instant she slid towards him, then stopped. A wet sucking sound came from beyond her legs. He pulled harder, waiting for her clothes to tear free of whatever had caught them.

She shook her head. “They need the rest.”

Another pull dragged her backwards. A bolt scraped a line along her breast.

“Both hands.”

Her blouse tore as he lifted her by the armpits, exposing grey skin ridged with the marks of the shelving. A rectangle of flesh had been removed from her flank; the muscle tightened as she strained. Her eyes stayed on his waist.

“My name's Maud,” she said. “Tell someone.”

He promised. He was crying too hard to say it clearly.

“Say it back.”

“Maud.”

“Good.”

Her grip tightened on his sleeve.

Her left ankle struck the upright with a hard crack. The foot folded sideways but remained braced there while the rest of her leg moved. Tobin tightened his grip. Under his right hand the blouse shifted, or he thought it did; then his fingers slid into a warm crease, and a thick sleeve of skin peeled down her side.

He moved his hand higher, searching for a hold that would not come away.

Maud bit his shoulder, her teeth going through the shirt and into him. With his cheek against her hair, Tobin felt a rapid series of snaps along her spine and held on.

Her body came forward with such sudden ease that he struck his head on the shelf.

Then he felt the open bottom of her ribs against his thigh.

She fell into the cramped space between them, a bubble swelling at one nostril. His palm entered the wound as though reaching into a warm bag. He spread his fingers to hold the contents in, and her hand caught his sleeve.

Inside his waistband, the pale lines began moving. He felt a slow tightening, like a belt being pulled one notch farther. Maud's eyes dropped to his stomach.

“Tell her,” she said.

He asked who. Her mouth moved against his shoulder. She was still trying to answer when the light changed and he found himself kneeling beside the self-service checkout.

Coralie stood with a security guard. Maud's blood covered Tobin's hands, and in his right fist he held a length of blue fabric and a crescent of skin. The guard took one step backwards.

The terminal showed MANUAL COLLECTION COMPLETE. Under it, the elapsed time: 23:00. Coralie reached past him for a roll of paper towels.

“What have you done?”

“The substitute's back. You can go now.”

His stomach heaved against his belt. Coralie glanced at it and moved the guard between them.

Tobin got one foot beneath him. His knee slid in the blood and he fell against the checkout, dropping the skin.

“Where's my sister?”

Coralie reached for the green button. Tobin saw the screen behind her arm.

ANOTHER REFUND?

Tobin caught her hand before she touched it and bent it backwards against the edge of the terminal. She cried out. The guard seized his shoulder, crushing the bite. Tobin screamed and kept hold of her.

“Where?”

“She left.”

“With me?”

Coralie nodded.

Tobin released her. The guard pulled him away from the terminal. Tobin's receipt fell from his pocket and landed in the blood.

He dropped after it. The guard stepped on his wrist. He could see the paper absorbing red towards the barcode.

“Let him have it,” Coralie said sharply.

The guard lifted his foot.

Tobin picked up the receipt without looking at the skin beside it.

He reached the bus shelter before vomiting again. His hands shook too hard to search his pockets, and he couldn't hear properly through the blood in his ear.

A woman standing at the bus stop called an ambulance. He begged to use her phone first.

Bryony answered on the third attempt.

He said her name.

She hung up.

He called again. This time she answered without speaking.

“It's me,” he said. “I'm at the bus stop. Listen to the traffic.”

A bus pulled in beside him, brakes exhaling into the phone. When he put it back to his ear, she was crying.

“You made me get in the car.”

“Where are you?”

“Home. I walked the last bit.”

“Did I hurt you?”

She took a breath that wouldn't finish.

“You kept asking where Willa was. You said I could trust you. You told me about the night Della died.”

He had told Bryony about that night. The drive home from the hospital, stopping to buy dishwasher tablets because it was on the list Della had left him, standing in a queue with the box while other people decided what to have for dinner. He had told Bryony yesterday, in the kitchen while Willa slept.

“Then you went stiff. Your foot was on the accelerator. I had to pull the handbrake.”

A key scraped in her lock.

“You were in the seat and then you weren't. I thought you'd fallen out. I got out and looked under the car.”

Tobin gripped his waistband. A knuckle flexed against his palm.

“You're not here,” Bryony said. “You're not outside?”

“No.”

“But you had the car keys. And your phone.”

This time his fingers found both. The phone screen was cracked across the middle.

An ambulance approached along the road. In the rise and fall of its siren, he heard Maud asking him to say her name.

*

At hospital, Tobin gave the police Maud's name before letting anyone clean his hands. Bryony phoned: she and Willa were safe. An officer took his car keys. Asked where to find the car, Tobin had to ring his sister again; he could no longer hold her answer in his head.

He shivered inside a warmed blanket. When the nurse cleaned his shoulder, he struck out. She stepped away. He apologised until she asked him to stop. Closing his eyes put Maud back in his hands.

A doctor examined the bruise around his waist. As she flattened the skin with her palm, the pale lines changed angle. She called a colleague over and asked Tobin to hold the gown clear. Both doctors watched the ridges move.

There was a small raised point in the old appendix scar.

“Was there a puncture here?”

He shook his head.

The doctor laid a finger beside it. A fingertip pushed back against hers. She withdrew her hand and called for imaging.

While she spoke on the phone, Tobin lifted his gown. A pale filament protruded from the scar. He pinched it between finger and thumb, thinking of a retained stitch. As he pulled, the skin puckered and opened.

A fingernail appeared in the slit and scraped his thumb.

Tobin made a noise so loud the doctor dropped the phone against her chest.

Behind the nail, an eye rolled towards the opening.

His eye. The brown fleck beside the iris that Della had called his coffee stain.

He dropped the gown and clamped both palms over it. A small fist struck his hands from inside.

Then, close enough to feel through the bones of his wrists, his own voice said, “It's me. I'm at the bus stop.”

He backed into the examination couch.

“Listen to the traffic,” it said.

On the receipt clenched in his hand: substitute retained by account holder between collections.

He leaned his weight into his hands. The fingers caught his palm and squeezed. Behind them, very faintly, a woman drew a thin, whistling breath through a damaged nose.

The doctor lifted the phone again and asked for his sister.

“Don't bring Willa,” he shouted.

The substitute began to cry in his daughter's voice.

*

By the time Bryony arrived, the scans were on the monitor. She came alone. With the doctor beside her, Tobin showed her the opening without lifting his hands away for long.

The doctor reached for the wall alarm without taking her eyes off the opening. She missed it on the first attempt.

A heel struck his ribs so hard that he bent double. His daughter sobbed from inside his belly.

“It hurts, Dad.”

Bryony reached towards the voice before catching herself.

“Get the receipt,” he said.

Bryony lifted the paper by a dry corner. Beneath the groceries and the daily schedule was the return instruction. She held it beside the monitor, comparing the small print with the bones inside her brother.

All supplied material must be returned.

The manual collection had given it another twenty-three minutes outside. It would get the same again at 5:35. Every day. Tobin pictured Willa waiting beyond Mrs Bell's locked door, hearing his voice explain why it was safe to open it.

It was 5:01.

The doctor wanted him to stay. She had seen the eye. She called for a surgeon and asked Tobin to give them time.

On the monitor, the pale lines were bones wrapped around his pelvis and ribs. Some lay between his organs. Others appeared to pass through them.

“Can you get it out before half past five?”

“We can't operate safely in half an hour.”

“What if it takes my place again?”

She didn't answer immediately. On the monitor, a jaw pressed against his spine. There was another, smaller jaw inside it.

“Take me back,” he told Bryony. “You have to keep it away from her.”

Bryony unhooked his trousers from the chair and helped him dress.

The doctor warned them about bleeding and collapse, then rang the officer outside. She gave Bryony dressings. An ambulance would follow them. Tobin couldn't get his shoes on. His sister carried them.

In the car, Tobin held a folded towel against his abdomen. Blood spread through it. From inside came the scrape of a nail along a rib.

Bryony kept both hands on the wheel. At a red light, she began to say she was sorry.

“Don't,” he said. “Please just drive.”

Willa called her phone. Mrs Bell had let her ring because she wouldn't stop asking.

Bryony answered on speaker.

“Is Dad with you?”

Tobin shut his eyes.

“Yes.”

“The right one?”

He couldn't speak.

Bryony said, “Yes, sweetheart.”

Under the towel, a second mouth began forming the answer.

*

At 5:26, Tobin reached the supermarket doors in his socks. Bryony carried the receipt. The officer from the hospital arrived behind them and blocked their way. The ambulance was still caught at the junction.

“Nine minutes,” Tobin said. “Then it gets to be me.”

Tobin ducked past him and went through the doors. The officer followed.

Coralie saw them from customer service. Her wrist was swollen. She started towards a telephone.

Bryony got there first and put the paper on the counter.

“The whole substitute back,” she said. “And you cancel it. In front of him.”

The officer stepped up beside her and asked Coralie to keep her hands where he could see them.

The substitute lifted its head. Watching the skull rise against Tobin's skin, Coralie put down the telephone.

“Issuing terminal.”

The same checkout stood empty. Tobin could see where someone had wiped Maud's blood from the grout. A thin brown line remained under the machine.

His legs locked at the sight of it.

Bryony put her hand between his shoulder blades, well clear of the bite.

“I'm here.”

She stayed behind him until he reached the terminal.

Coralie scanned the receipt. The terminal chirped.

PLACE RETURNED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA.

Tobin stared at the little metal platform.

“How?”

Coralie opened a drawer and took out a box cutter.

Bryony struck her hand. The knife skittered across the floor. The officer caught Coralie's wrist and moved her away from Tobin. Shoppers were backing out of the checkout lanes; someone abandoned a basket beside his foot. A child began crying. The voice made the head inside him turn.

Coralie twisted her swollen wrist in the officer's grip.

“It's open already,” she said. “You have to let it out.”

“You put it in me.”

She looked at his abdomen, not his face. “You accepted it.”

The clock above the tobacco cabinet read 5:31.

Tobin lowered himself beside the checkout. Bryony offered her hand; he held it so tightly she winced. With his other hand, he lifted his shirt.

The scar bulged. A fingertip emerged, its nail splitting the last bridge of skin. Then a second finger hooked over the edge.

Bryony held the dressing against the opening. The fingers pushed it aside.

“Look at me,” he said.

She did.

He removed the towel.

The wound opened with a soft tearing sound. His abdomen flattened on one side as a shoulder forced its way along the other. A hand came out, followed by a forearm slick with blood.

Tobin screamed. Bryony held him against her, apologising into his hair.

The hand caught the edge of the bagging platform.

His voice came from the opening.

“You can't do this to me.”

A head forced its way into the light. It was his face, compressed almost flat, one ear folded across the cheek. The mouth opened against his belly.

“The right one?” it asked, in Willa's voice.

Bryony's hand slipped in his. She was trying not to vomit. The officer stood several feet away, holding Coralie's wrist.

A second tongue moved inside the protruding face. Through its open mouth, behind his teeth, he saw another gum. A raw socket where a gold crown had been.

“Maud?”

The outer mouth closed. He felt the inner one continue against his skin.

“Tell her,” she whispered.

He bent his head closer. A red thread stretched between his belly and its lower lip.

“My girl,” she said. “Tell my girl.”

The whistle from the meat packet came from between the two sets of teeth. Along the jaw, Tobin could see the frayed edge of Maud's blue blouse.

He seized the protruding wrist.

The hand clung to the platform. Its nail beds were split and dirty. Maud's hand, enlarged to match his.

“Tobin,” Bryony said. “Don't pull.”

He held the wrist steady. A thumb stroked his skin. He loosened his grip. Her thumb stopped. Inside the face, Maud's mouth opened again.

The clock changed to 5:33.

Willa would ask the dog question first. After that she might ask about the hospital, or the night she'd heard him crying in the kitchen. He had reassured her about that only yesterday.

He took each finger off the platform and held the hand away from anything it could grip.

The terminal spoke again.

PLACE RETURNED ITEM IN BAGGING AREA.

He leaned forward.

A joint caught in the opening and bent with a dry click. The body followed, landing on the metal with a heavy, wet slap. Tobin felt a dragging inside his belly, then release. Bryony caught him before his head hit the floor.

His face stared up from between bent knees. Deep in a crease of flesh, Maud's lips parted.

The green button appeared.

CONFIRM RETURN.

Coralie told Bryony to press the button. She leaned towards the screen, dragging against the officer's grip.

Maud's mouth kept moving. Bryony waited for him to answer. He held her hand until her fingers whitened.

“Please,” he said. He didn't know which of them he was asking.

Bryony pressed it.

The platform sank. The body flattened under the tiled lip, and air came from it in a long, thin whistle. Its eyes widened. Behind the face, Maud's mouth shaped a word.

Tobin kept looking. As the heel passed the lip, a thin strand stretched back to his wound. He felt it tug, then snap and recoil into him.

His shirt caught under the platform's rim. Bryony pulled him backwards and the hem tore.

The metal came up empty. The officer let go of Coralie and dropped to one knee. He hooked his fingers under the platform and pulled. It wouldn't lift.

“She's still down there.” His voice broke on the last word. He pulled again until his fingertips slipped, then backed away, wiping them on his trousers.

“There's others,” Tobin managed. He drew breath to tell him where, but the pain stopped him. The officer snatched up his radio and called for help.

The screen turned red.

RETURN WEIGHT VARIANCE: 2 g.

The officer asked Coralie what that meant. She was already reaching for the keypad below the card reader.

“It's within tolerance.”

“Wait.”

She entered four digits and touched the keypad again. The officer caught her hand too late. Tobin heard the click of a handcuff. The screen turned green.

REFUND CANCELLED.

The printer chirred. Bryony took the paper as it fed out.

“What about the weight?” she asked.

“The scale,” Coralie said. “It's cancelled.”

Tobin reached for the paper. His hand passed beside it, and the floor tilted.

*

He woke with drains beside his hips and Bryony asleep beside him. A seat-belt bruise showed at her collar. She hadn't told him about that.

The supermarket was closed. The officer came to ask about Maud. Tobin described her broken arm, her name, the bite. At the return, he stopped. The officer put his notebook away and waited.

Willa visited on the third day. She stayed at the end of the bed until Tobin said, “Captain Farts.” She didn't laugh, but she came closer and took his little finger.

Two operations repaired the wound. Nineteen days passed before they let him home. He slept with the light on. Whenever the ward fridge started, his hands tightened on the rails, pulling against Maud's weight.

Her daughter sent a photograph. Maud stood in a garden holding a bucket, her left arm whole and sunburnt. Tobin wrote that she had saved Willa. He couldn't write what he had done to her. He gave the officer the note.

On the first night home, Willa asked whether Mum had ever really been underneath. Beside her wardrobe stood the sleepover bag, Della's slippers inside it.

“No,” he said.

Willa asked him to leave the door open. After she fell asleep, he took the bag downstairs and sat in the hallway until dawn.

His surgeon knew about the missing weight and had found no foreign material in either operation. Tobin hadn't lost another minute. When the scar tingled, he read the discharge summary again.

The next evening, Bryony helped Willa draw at the kitchen table while Tobin went upstairs to change the dressing. He could hear them arguing gently about whether a dog could have green feet.

He sat on the bed and lifted his shirt.

A knuckle rose against his fingertip, then another. Small fingers closed around his own through the skin.

He remembered the strand snapping as the body went down. The recoil inside him.

Tobin lifted his finger. The little hand followed it, raising a pale ridge under the skin.

From the kitchen, Willa called, “Dad?”

He shut his mouth with both hands.

His stomach answered, “Captain Farts.”