For a week neither Annie nor Davey went to school; instead they met at the tobacco fields. Always careful to leave and return home at the same times, they had got away with it so far. Davey’s dad and aunty were too busy getting life together for London, and Annie was never asked about school in any case. It had always been taken for granted that she would work hard and not make any waves.

Davey and Annie talked about their love for one another, their fear of facing the rest of the world by themselves. Annie spoke a little of Father’s cane and Davey of his unwavering plans to kill him. Sometimes they posted questions into the pillar-box, as if it really did have magical properties. Annie decided she couldn't run away; she couldn't leave Joe with Mum and Father. She updated Davey daily on the progress of her little brother's fragile heart. Davey’s aunty had lived as a gypsy most of her life. She believed in the healing power of flowers and had told him that foxgloves could cure sick hearts. So Annie and Davey decided to sneak into some of the gardens up on Providence Road and pilfer some.

It was easy. Although they were spotted twice, those old enough to be guarding their yards in the daytime were no match for the legs of youth. They ran the entire journey back to the tobacco fields before looking at one another, sharing a grin of relief and then bursting into breathless laughter with the thrill of their success. Annie carefully folded the flowers into her satchel, ready to take to Joe when she gave him his medicine that evening.

The scrawny toddler gazed up at her from the cot where he had spent the whole of his short existence, a weak smile on his pallid, wrinkled face. Annie knew he loved her more than anything in his narrow two-year-old world; the affection was passionately mutual.

‘These’ll make you better, Joey’, she said, intertwining the foxglove stems around the bars of his infant prison.

‘Annie! Who you talking to?’ roared Father, ears like an eagle.

‘No-one, Fa - ’

‘You’d best not be buggin’ your brother again, girl. You wear him out, I'll wear you out.’ Annie blew a silent kiss and rested her fingers softly on Joe’s cold forehead. She slipped out of the bedroom door, leaving him to his confinement.

By some miracle nobody mentioned the foxgloves. Father never looked in on Joe, and Annie guessed Nanna and Granfer were now too slow and blind to notice. It seemed Mum had decided to risk this little secret; she hadn’t asked, anyway. Perhaps she’d heard the same story about foxgloves’ healing powers. They remained where they were, giving Annie precious hope even as they gradually withered and died. They took little Joe with them.

Annie cried for two days solid. She bore no mind to the chastisement she received, to the strap of Father’s belt. He said Joe’s death was her fault, ‘prob’ly poisoning ‘im with yer bleedin’ flowers!’ Mum stopped speaking entirely. She’d be up as usual to make Father’s breakfast and pack him off to the factory, but unbeknown to him she would return to bed during daylight hours while he worked. Annie came and went, meeting Davey at the fields, and Mum paid no heed to the strange hours she kept. Davey would hold Annie and she would say nothing, concentrating on disappearing into the gleam of his watery eyes, the dryness of his hands. He’d let go and she would scream out in the fury of her loss. Why didn’t the foxgloves work?

For Father, Joe’s death provided an excuse for more anger, an increase in his wrath against his wife and daughter. His outbursts became almost predictable and the fierceness he’d always possessed seemed to have had its own strange logic in comparison. Annie was numb to his violence.

Friday arrived and along with it, Father’s dark sense of humour; he announced they were to go to the pictures. He had decided that, seeing as Christmas was approaching, they needed to cheer themselves up, get over this ‘episode’. Through twelve long years of trying to stay out of Father’s way, Annie had never before realised the awful depth of his heartlessness. She hated him. But she went to the pictures because she had no choice. She and Mum were united by their silence, holding one another’s hand tightly all the way. Annie clutched her pillar-box under her other arm. It contained some of her questions, her sadness about Joe, the thoughts she could make no sense of. On this day her surprising union with Mum seemed to prevent Father from interfering and enforcing the Law of Leaving Things at Home.

The film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Ordinarily fascinated by the magic of this technicolour world, Annie could not concentrate even from one frame to the next. But she let the whole thing deliciously wash over her. Its childishly happy songs, its bright-eyed animals, its unrealistic joy. She bathed in a trifle of unreality, closing her eyes on life and forgetting.

‘Leave it here’, said Father, when she got up to visit the Ladies during the intermission. Grudgingly, she did as she was told, putting her coat on top of the pillar-box so as to stop it rolling away. There was a long queue and by the time she returned the picture had started up again. Father eyed her fiercely. Silently, she picked up her coat. The pillar-box was gone. Sinking to her knees, she frantically patted around under her chair, squinting in the darkness along the row of legs. If she could only make out its shape…

‘Sssh!’ said Father, kicking her with his steel-capped work shoes. She flinched in fear and pain, as he leaned over and grabbed her by the hair. ‘Don’t you dare disgrace me, Girl.’ Just wait ‘til you get home, his stony eyes said. As if Annie cared. The pillar-box was lost forever - she knew that. Even the bravest resistance couldn't prevent her being dragged out of there the moment the picture was over.

But what did it matter anyway? Joe was dead, Davey moving away. The box hadn't given her any answers after all, only brought her trouble in causing her to have hope. Her only hope left was to run away.

Following a weekend of punishment: cleaning, polishing, laundering Father's filthy work shirts in the bath tub, Monday morning finally came. Annie was let out for school, Mum escorting her to the gates and, in a precious moment of affection, giving her a kiss on the cheek before returning home. Waiting until she was out of sight, Annie ran back down the drive and off to the tobacco fields. She didn’t care who had seen her; she wouldn’t be back.

Davey wasn’t there. She hung out alone in their shared secret place, hoping hopelessly that he'd come. She looked up at the statue of the Bristol Eagle high on the hill and she planned how they would run away, be free. At the end of the school day she backtracked Davey’s route home, winding up at her own house without him. She’d guessed what had happened but refused to believe it. She’d been too wrapped up in Joe’s death, in the injustice of it all, even too lost in the labour to notice. Outside Davey’s place was a mover’s cart, and a family she'd not seen before spilling out of it. They looked like they might be the ‘Jamaicans’ - the foreigners Father always ranted about. There was an old lady and a younger man, a little boy about her age and a toddler, all with black, smiley faces. They carried boxes and the man heaved two big trunks. It was too late; Davey had gone.