It had to do with love, with the word being taken so much for granted I couldn’t feel anything. The only thing I could feel was afraid, afraid was real, the whole time. I can’t remember how it would happen, that Pappa would get angry. It just did. You could knock a glass over or be late for dinner. Your boot could have chafed your ankle while you were up on the fell, so you needed a plaster. You could get a fishing lure stuck after a cast. Perhaps you’d scribbled on the pad by the telephone. Or a school friend might come and ring the doorbell while we were having our dinner. It wasn’t these things in themselves, it was what they stood for: not being thoughtful enough, not being heedful. It wasn’t leaving the milk out, it was being that sort of person. The sort who’s negligent, thoughtless, who never pays heed. It seems like such a small thing when I write it down. But it wasn’t small, it was everything. The world was hard. Wrong was wrong. When it could have been right. Afraid was a state of being. I don’t know when it started. All I know is that I was afraid, afraid was a skin beneath my skin that couldn’t be shed.