It was a short journey from her flat in Cotham, through St. Paul’s, down the M32 and across to the A4 – what now remained of Bath Road – and of course the site. The Eagle looked down at her in her little Renault Clio; she shrank amongst the traffic.

Arriving at the site was like stepping into one of her nightmares. The vans, the washing shed, the heaps of rubbish, the smell: it was all as she remembered except shabbier, dirtier, less utopian. There was a collection of metal scraps, which may well have still been Jinx’s, but they glared with rust. Although the angry skies threatened rain, there was no sign of the bright plastic covers she remembered. She realised there must have been some magic about this place before, remarkable now by its absence. The majority of the site’s inhabitants appeared to have left with it. Tucked away in its far corner, Mary's van fitted well into the general vision of decay. Mould had developed around the windows and the door - which by the look of things didn’t close properly anymore. As they moved closer, Kristal covered her nose and mouth with her chiffon scarf. The stench was corrosive. The night pan had clearly not been emptied in days, possibly weeks. Her eyes swallowed as Terry looked around at her, a quick glance up and down her tailored red suit as if she was naked. ‘You baint be used to this no more, eh Cock?’ he said, clearly expecting no answer.

Kristal noticed on the van door how a heart had been scrawled into the grime. ‘But Mum was always so clean!’ she insisted. Terry scowled. What right had she to ‘insist’ anything?

‘Things change, Luv. She missed you summat rotten, our Scarlet’. Mary’s gypsy name. Hearing this man she’d never met talk with such authority about her own mother made Kristal’s insides freeze. He led the way inside and she followed him, careful not to let the door touch her outfit. What a ridiculous thing to wear here - as she’d dressed hours before it had felt like some sort of statement; now it just added to the guilt. Her heel got wedged in the upside-down milk crate used as a doorstep, but she yanked it free before Terry could have another excuse to glare.

Her childhood home was almost unrecognisable. Mary’s little bottles and charms, once meticulously dusted and kept in order, now lay strewn about the place, some smashed, and every one filthy. The faded photo of her father, Sean, lay among them all in a cracked frame. To think that Mary took on all of this for him - it made Kristal determined to be honest with Pria. Clothes crawled around the floor. Kristal recognised almost every garment from when she had last been there – nearly eight years ago. Mary had always religiously packed her bed away, and yet not any more. Unmade and unclean, it was tricky to picture her mother here at all.

Mary had been run over two days previously. More gypsies got killed that way than cats, claimed a news article Kristal had been reading only the week before. And yet it was clear to her now that her mother had been dying for sometime.

‘Broke her ‘art, like, not been let see the lill’ un. She used t’…’ Terry continued. But Kristal wasn’t listening. She’d noticed something that’d stopped her own blood, let alone this pious old gypsy’s prattle. The post-box – there it was, on the bed, under a filthy nightie designed for women half her mother’s age. When on earth had she started wearing the things? She lifted the box, only to notice that the tin stopper was missing; it must have been hurriedly wrenched off, as the seal was damaged. Empty of course. She wondered on which side of death Mary had been robbed. But who was Kristal to judge? Her mind was racing –

A desperate night. She’d come back to the van with Darren – a loser from the year above if only he’d still gone to school. They were high, she was horny, and she knew just where to get enough cash for a good time. Only Darren had other ideas in mind and Mary returned to find them at it in her bed, the contents of the moneybox pocketed for later. She’d said nothing, just picked up the box, replaced the seal, and put it back in its ‘secret’ place. She’d looked at her daughter for a few moments then at last opened her lips to speak.

‘I found that box, you know. In a field up by the Eagle, near Bath Road. I saved it for you.’ She looked at her daughter again without emotion and walked out of the van.

Kristal hated her for knowing, for not getting mad. The following morning she shredded up a dress made from silk patches that Mary had meticulously collected and sewn for her in golden thread. She needed to hurt Mary, to provoke a reaction that would somehow absolve her of the shame of years of tolerated stealing. Her teenage inability to shock made her feel useless. Mary slowly swept up the pieces and took them to the fabric bin, silent tears streaming down her doll-like face. Kristal looked at her in disgust and finally made the decision to cut herself loose from this weakness.

Kristal clutched Mary’s raided post-box to her chest. It was hard, sharp-edged, cold. She collapsed to the bed. All these years of keeping her hands clean; she looked down at them now, her knuckles bold and angry white, her fingers dripping blood. Old blood. Blood she thought she’d buried beneath prize-winning hairdressing and meticulous mothering. But the blood was there, dripping down the walls of her immaculately furnished flat. Oh yes, she’d proven she could not only do ‘normal’, she could excel at it. But it didn’t make her any different from Mary.

‘I killed her’, she said. Terry said nothing. Though she continued to stare at him, Kristal could only see herself, in snapshots, indelible… Instructing the midwife to turn the mad woman away. Writing the letter. Explaining how Pria had given her a new start. Explaining how the alcohol, the demands, the violence on the site - none of it fitted with a new baby and a new life.

She saw herself barring Mary from the salon, telephoning the police, applying for a withstraining order: shopping in her own Muh. She saw herself and she felt sick.

Terry threw Mary’s old keys onto the bed next to Kristal. Mary’s little purple troll was still attached, its filthy face smiling up at her with surreal humour.

‘Anyway, Lady. It’s all yours now’, he said. Taking one last long look at her, he left the van. Kristal picked up the keys and looked at them: her inheritance. All that she had struggled to run away from now neatly resting in the palm of her hand.

She opened a window and the catch fell off. A gust of wind blew through with a ferocity that made her shiver. But it had refreshed the stale air.

Picking up the obtrusive post-box, she imagined Mary free from all of this at last and she hugged its awkwardness towards her. Things didn’t fit as comfortably as they should in this life; living wasn’t simple in anyone’s world. Kristal could make changes if she really wanted to, but it was too late to tell her mum that she loved her now.

She took a detour via Toys R Us on her way to pick up Pria. At 3pm the car park was rammed and she gave up trying to find anywhere in the end, parking up at Flower’s Hill instead and enjoying the windy walk through the grey industrial estate. She loved buying presents for Pria; you could get such great things for children now. In this computerised, brightly coloured plastic palace she often forgot what it was she’d come for. Taking out the little portrait of Pria she kept in her wallet, Kristal thought about the growing up her daughter would have to do this week. If she wanted Pria to feel seven and safe again she was going to have to open up a little, tell her some forgotten stories.

She found what she was looking for – plush brown with a white chest, and the signature green head and yellow beak of the male variety. It didn’t clap, but when you clapped it quacked and walked about. It was a start. Mary had been right to send Sean’s circus duck back after all, but maybe she and Pria would go to a show at a travelling circus one day. And maybe one day she would tell Pria about her dad and why life was the way it was. Maybe they would go caravanning as mother and daughter, ‘slumming it’ for a bit, like Nanna Mary. Maybe, if it was possible, Pria might even have some dad memories of her own. But first Kristal would take her to meet her long lost Nanna.

Through the pain of what was too late and what could never be, Kristal smiled in the realisation of what could be if she could only find the strength. Life would go on, and she felt strangely okay about it. As she walked back to the car she let the tears fall at last, the first she had shed in seven and a half years.