PART ONE:
 
A KNOT, TIGHTENING
 
“Nothing at all exists which is not subject to the conditioning of death”
 
- The Tibetan Book of the Dead
 

I have never visited their graves…
I have never visited their graves; the grief I carry always inside me would be too much to bear, so I choose to remember them in my own way, in my own time. Not a day goes by when they are not in my thoughts. They haunt my every movement, but still I have not seen them: they have not come to me in the way that others have, asking that I bear witness to the memory of their passing or simply requesting that I usher them towards the next part of their journey…but some day, somehow, I hope that they will find their way back to my side.
 
 

Chapter One
 
Fifteen Years Ago
 
The Mersey is a broad black ribbon, the shimmering lights of Birkenhead promising a world of untold stories on the opposite bank – dark stories, probably told by old men in their cups and women whose skin has been bruised by careless husbands too many times to count. I stare through the passenger window, lost in thoughts of nothing in particular – just thinking, as I tend to do, about life in general: my dull job, paying the bills, the things I think I might be missing out on because I married so young and the things I gained by doing so.

The broad shape of a ferry trawls slowly across the darkened waters, seeming to heave upwards on waves that are not quite visible, as if a giant submerged hand is struggling to lift it above the busy surface of the river. Darkness then presses down on the vessel, giving the illusion that it is now sinking g...