I can’t get up off… I have to get up off the seabed. I’m… Shame. I’m ashamed. I’ve done something very bad, something shameful that’s making my stomach tie itself up in knots. Mummy? I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mum. Am I awake? Emily? Auntie Bridge?

Hey, Squirt. Did you remember your ankle support?

Auntie Bridge! That’s my auntie! That’s her voice!

Where am I? When is this?

Course. I put it on in the flat. That’s me! That’s my voice!

I can see my legs: crossed, white baggy trousers. My blue Doc Martens on the dashboard – the left on the right, the right on the left. We are in Auntie Bridget’s van. We so are because I can hear the rattle of the engine, can smell her vanilla air freshener. Fags, a bit, underneath.

You… you’re not with us, Mummy. You’re probably at home because it’s the evening and you don’t go out, so you’ll be lying on the sofa watching some Netflix series.

Ankle support… white baggy trousers…

Auntie Bridge must be taking me to taekwondo. She always takes me. She stays and watches and shouts Yes! or Get in, girl! when I do a good kick or something, which is so embarrassing. I tell her to shush, but I don’t mind really ’cos the others say she’s a legend. All my friends say she’s a legend. Your auntie’s so cool, they say and I’m like, So?

I have my kit on, my brown belt tied round my waist. I know taekwondo is good for strength and self-defence and everything, but secretly I like it because it’s given me abs. Naomi is jealous of my abs. She always pokes me in the stomach and says, That’s just freaky. I have Instagram abs #nofilter.

Reckon you could still kick someone in the neck? I ask Auntie Bridge. We’re on Twickenham High Street, near Poundland. You know, like, if they were mugging you or something?

She laughs. The van lurches as she changes gear. I could kick you up the arse.

We both laugh. Auntie Bridge is a black belt, second dan, but she doesn’t do it any more. Auntie Bridge has six piercings and seven tattoos. You said if I get a tattoo you’ll bloody kill me. Bloody is your worst swear word. You’re weird about swearing. We’ve got enough stacked against us as it is, is what you say, without a foul mouth on top.

I’m sorry, but that’s just weird.

Auntie Bridge is a grown woman… grown woman… groan, woman… I am a girl who thought she was a grown-up. But I wasn’t. I’m not. And now I can’t see you, Mummy. I don’t know where you are…

Everything slots into place; everything comes around. Auntie Bridge has this tattoo on the inside of her wrist. Everyone thinks it’s a Celtic sign, but it’s not. It’s an A and a B joined together so that the right leg of the A and the spine of the B are one line.

It stands for Antonia and Bridget, Auntie Bridget says.

Where are we now? When are we?

The Italian café, that’s where. Café Bellissimo. I recognise the chairs. I can see Waitrose out of the front window, further up, towards the station. Auntie Bridge wouldn’t be seen dead in Starbucks because she’s an anarchist. She says that all the big chains are fascists. I go to Starbucks with Naomi sometimes, but I don’t tell Auntie Bridge.

Antonia and Bridget. Antonia – that’s you, Mum, obvs. But everyone calls you Toni. The name Toni is so lame, but the only reason you’re called Antonia is because your dad wanted a boy and he was going to call you Anthony, LOL. But he left Granny Casement literally just after you were born, which is proper savage even though you say you were better off without him because he used to hit Granny and stuff. You say Antonia sounds too posh, but Toni is plain cheesy. Cheesy peas, you say when you’re messing about, or when someone takes a photo. It’s from some old comedy show you used to watch. You hate having your photo taken. Cheesy chips, like we get in Dorset. Remember when we were watching the TV that time and they asked that footballer what his favourite cheese was and he said, Er, melted. We laughed our heads off at that, didn’t we?

I could have a tattoo somewhere you wouldn’t see – on my bum!

Bottom, Rosie. The word is bottom.

Bottom, Puck, Titania. Auntie Bridge was Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she told me. It was when she was young. Bottom of the ocean… a seabed… Auntie Bridge got that tattoo done when she was twenty. It was her first.

What does it mean, Auntie Bridge? We’re back in Café Bellissimo. Auntie Bridge has her Led Zep T-shirt on; her arm is on the table, wrist face up. The A and the B.

What do you mean, what does it mean? she says. I told you, it’s your mum and me.

I mean, like, why did you have it done?

Because… Auntie Bridge stops, like she can’t say it. She looks me in the eye, as if she’s deciding whether she should say it or not. I had it done because… well, when I found out about Uncle Eric.

Do you mean with Mummy?

She nods.

You told me about what happened with your uncle, but you never talk about him. Literally never. I didn’t know it was why Auntie Bridge got that tattoo – as in, the exact reason. The way I’m remembering this, that’s how it feels, like I didn’t know that before.

Auntie Bridge looks more serious than I have ever seen her. She looks like she’s going to cry, and she never cries. Interfered, you said, but I don’t think you’ve said that word to me yet. In this memory, I mean. I think you told me later. I know what interfere means. You think I’m a kid, but I’m not. I could get married next year, legally. I could have a child. I could go to the GP and get the pill and they wouldn’t have to tell you because it would be patient confidentiality. There are different types of abuse: verbal, emotional, physical. Sexual. We had a talk about it in PSHE last year. Personal, social, health and economic education. So many abbreviations! GCSE… General Certificate of Secondary Education. PE… physical education. YOLO… you only live once. ROFL… roll on the floor laughing. You like FFS. I read that on a text you sent to Auntie Bridge.

I’m locked out, FFS.

Her reply: Spare key under geranium, you muppet.

You say FFS means for flip’s sake, as if I don’t know. You’re so weird. I’m fifteen not ten, you know.

The water is thick and dark. It’s full of weeds. I’m all alone in the moonlight. There is music. The wind is in my hair.

I’m in Emily’s car. I’m in the passenger seat and she has the roof down. We’re singing along to her tape. Cats the Musical.

Midnight…

I’m being sick into a bucket. Your hand is cool on my forehead. That’s it, you say. That’s it – good girl. You’ll feel better now.

I’m in the kitchen. There are Rice Krispie cakes, my favourite, on that three-tier cardboard cake stand we’ve got.

Can I have one, Mummy?

Not now, baby girl. You’ll spoil your appetite. You can have one after dinner.

The tabletop comes up to my chest… how old am I? Eight? Nine?

I’m in the Italian café. I’m with Auntie Bridge. She is wearing her black leather trousers. I have hot chocolate with little pink and white marshmallows. It is after school. I’m maybe eleven? It’s afterwards…

Auntie Bridge always picked me up from school afterwards. Auntie Bridge drinks black coffee: an Americano. She goes to the gym and she’s quite dench. But your arms are even more dench than Auntie Bridge’s. You always twist the lids off jars when we can’t. Auntie Bridge has a patch on her bicep. Trying to give up smoking. Again. Auntie Bridge is six years older than you. Six piercings. I was six when Daddy died in the accident. I was six before.

We shared a room when we were little, me and your mum, Auntie Bridge says.

Was that in Hounslow?

Yes. At Granny and Grandad Jackson’s in Benson Close. That’s your great-grandparents, Squirt. Your grandad Casement, that’s our dad, ran off with another woman, back to Scotland, we think, and your granny had no job and no money so she moved in with Great-Granny and Grandad Jackson. And Uncle Eric lived there too. Our uncle, I mean. He was your great-granny Jackson’s son from her first marriage, to a guy called Patrick. She had your auntie Patricia with him as well. I’m sorry, I’m not explaining this to you very well.

I get it. I try and keep it in my mind, but it’s complicated, and even as I’m holding on, it floats away. I know Eric is my half-great-uncle, but I’ve never met him. I think he’s in a mental hospital, but I can’t remember. You told me he was ill. Ill-in-the-head ill, you said. You never tell me the whole truth. Auntie Bridge told me what happened. Not in detail or anything.

Uncle Eric started on her when I left for drama school.

Started interfering, you mean?

We are talking about you. I am trying to be mature; I am using the correct terms. This isn’t in the Italian café now – this is at the flat. It’s another time. I am older. I already know about your uncle Eric. I have Doc Marten boots that Auntie Bridge bought me, and she didn’t buy me those until Year 9, so I’m thirteen or fourteen. You are out. You are probably at your charity meeting or at work, because you never go out anywhere else, like to the pub or anywhere, except to see one of Auntie Bridge’s gigs, but even that’s only, as you would say, once in a blue moon, because you are always tired.

Auntie Bridge nods, but it’s a grim nod, like when they identify bodies on the television.

He only got to her because I wasn’t there to protect her, sick bastard.

Auntie Bridge swears in front of me sometimes when you’re not there. She says the F-word, but she told me not to tell you, because when you guys were growing up, she always told you never to swear. People like us have enough holding us back without a foul mouth, she used to say to you when you were growing up. Hmm, where have I heard that before? LOL. That’s why you’re strict about table manners as well. Hold your knife and fork properly, don’t hunch over the table, put your cutlery together to show you’ve finished… blah. Auntie Bridge smokes on the back patio, too, when she’s supposed to have stopped.

Why didn’t you call the police? I ask, even though I know our family don’t trust the police.

She shakes her head. The pi— the police are useless. Were, anyway. We called them once, when Dad… when your grandad gave our mum a black— when he hit Granny Casement. They stood outside and did nothing. There’s Mum with a shiner like a big bloody plum and Dad fobbing them off with some bullsh— some rubbish about the cupboard door…

Why didn’t you tell them what happened?

We did. They did nothing, Squirt. Sweet FA. Said they couldn’t intervene unless it was physically happening in front of them. And they would have done nothing to that sick, feckless bastard Eric either. Sorry. Anyway, I did it. I beat him up myself.

My mouth drops open. Your uncle Eric? What, like, with taekwondo?

She smiles. Something like that.

My mouth is still open with shock. I’ve never heard either of these stories before. At that moment I think Auntie Bridge is more than a legend; she is a double-hard kickass legend! But at the same time, I can’t imagine it because she is so peaceful and chill. I don’t know when any of what she’s telling me was, except that it was in the past.

So that’s when I got my first tattoo. She sips her Americano. We are back in the Italian café, so I suppose I’m at primary school again. She must have told me different versions of this story at different times. Grown-ups do that. You have to get those versions and slide them on top of one another like coloured filters until you build a picture that looks real.

I stroke the inside of Auntie Bridge’s wrist with my fingertips. I trace the Celtic sign that isn’t. Her wrist is soft, and I think about how she has the same blood as me and you. What does it mean, Auntie Bridge?

It’s a pact. Like a promise.

Like your band, The Promise?

A bit, yeah. Except a pact is maybe more serious.

Like a contract?

Yeah. Except there’s no paper. And you can end a contract; you can pay your way out or give notice or whatever. This is forever.

But what does it actually, actually mean? As in this pact, yours and Mum’s one?

It means… She looks out of the window. Her eyes dart like fish as the traffic goes by outside. It means I’ll never let your mum down again.