She doesn’t drink from it, she just stares at me really intently, and places it on the floor next to the bed. She pats the mattress beside her. ‘Kirra, you’re shaking, what’s the matter? And where the hell have you been?’ The dam of feelings bursts inside of me and the water gushes from my eyes. ‘I’m going to be in the paper tomorrow, Mum,’ I tell her. ‘They took my picture and everything.’ Then in a huge torrent of words, I tell her about how I was at McGinty’s, and that he went into cardiac arrest, and how I called the ambulance and saved his life. I’m crying so hard that snot is smeared above my lip. Mum hugs me, and I can feel her bones against my cheek. ‘Babygirl, what on earth were you doing over at McGinty’s house?’ I wipe my face against the back of my forearm. ‘I thought he’d killed a kid who’d gone missing. My friend Boogie told me he’d murder again, and he begged me to make sure he was caught, except Boogie said that McGinty had strangled his wife and I talked to the doctor when I was at the hospital, and it isn’t true, and I don’t know what’s true anymore.
