Our house looks onto a motorway. On the other side of the motorway there is a graveyard. Mum says that the graveyard is full of the graves of little boys and girls who ran onto the motorway and were knocked down. She says that years ago – before I was born – there were many more children living in our area but that, one by one, they were hit by cars because they didn’t listen to their mummies and they ran onto the road.

‘The quickest way to get to the graveyard Irene, is to run onto that road’ she says. 'If you could see the graves Irene, you’d see that they all belong to little boys and girls like you. Aged 9, aged 5, aged 11, they all say. You are never to cross that road!’

But I have been to the graveyard and I have seen the graves. Most of them say things like ‘Loving wife and mother’ or ‘Rest in peace Dad’, so they can’t belong to children. There are some graves which I know must belong to children because they are usually smaller, but they are very old graves. One says, ‘1897’ and ‘Aged 2’. I can’t read the rest of what it says but I know that it can’t be the grave of a little boy or girl who ran across the motorway, because my teacher told us that the motorway was built in the nineteen sixties.

I know how to cross the motorway. I wait for a long time until there are no cars coming. I look both ways and then I run very fast. Mum says it doesn’t matter if you run fast because you could still fall and hurt your leg and not be able to get up. ‘Then a truck or a lorry will come Irene, and it won’t be able to stop in time and it will crush you, flatten you, and then you certainly won’t be able to get up ever again.’

‘But what if a car came mum? Could that crush you?’ I asked. ‘Yes Irene’ said mum as she stood next to the sink, shaking my inhaler. ‘What about a van?’ ‘Yes. That too.’ Sometimes I see people riding their bikes along the side of the road so I said, ‘Could a bike crush you mum?’ ‘Yes even bikes’. I didn’t think a bike could crush someone so I said, ‘But bikes aren’t heavy mum. I can lift my bike right up. I don’t think a bike could crush someone mum because....’ ‘Oh for God’s sake Irene! Yes a bike could crush you and a car and a van and everything else that flies down that bloody road’. And then she told me again that I was never ever to go near the motorway, and that it was my dad’s fault that we moved to this ‘stupid place’, and that it wasn’t safe and that it made my asthma worse living here. And then she shook my inhaler so hard that it flew out of her hand and landed on the floor, near the dogs bowl.

‘Oh Jesus Christ, now look’ said mum as she bent to pick my inhaler up from the floor, ‘It’ll be covered in germs’. ‘Why don’t you wash it under the tap?’ I said, because that’s what I always have to do if I drop something on the floor and mum shouts. But she said that germs could have gotten inside it. And even though I said that she had just washed the floor and the dog’s bowl and everywhere else in the kitchen she said that it didn’t matter. She said germs are everywhere, and even though you can’t see the danger – the danger is always there.

Mum thumped the inhaler down onto the table and went quickly out of the room. When she came back in she was holding my red winter jacket with the bells on the sleeves. ‘Come on Irene. We have to go to the doctors for another inhaler. Quickly!’. ‘But mum, it’s warm outside, and this is my winter jacket’ I protested. ‘Just be quiet. We need to go to the doctors’ she snapped as she thrust my left arm, then my right arm into the sleeves. She buttoned up my jacket tightly then took my hand and marched me out of the house. Mum didn’t wear her jacket. She didn’t even wear her shoes. She ran along in her faded, flowery slippers, tugging at my arm and always telling me to ‘Hurry up! Hurry up!’

At the top of the hill I could see my friends playing, just a few metres away from the road. They were waiting for me to come back from lunch so we could all go over to the graveyard together. I could see the fear on my friend Jenny’s face as she watched my mum and I hurrying toward her. Maybe my mum had discovered our plans? Maybe she would soon be visiting Jenny’s mum to tell her what bad girls we were?

‘Irene won’t be playing this afternoon’ shouted mum as we passed, ‘She has to get her inhaler’. Jenny’s face relaxed and she called after me, ‘Hey Irene! Why you wearing that jacket? It’s not winter you know!’ And suddenly my face felt as hot as the rest of me. Mum told Jenny to be quiet. She said that she was playing too close to the road and that she would tell Jenny’s mum. Then she turned to me and said ‘You are not to play with those boys and girls. You are not to play next to the road! I hope you don’t play next to the road!’ ‘I don’t, I don’t! I said, but she pulled my arm towards her so my face got closer to hers and she stared into my eyes. I thought she was trying to look inside my head, to see if she could tell if I was lying. She turned and hurried off again, dragging me behind her.

I felt like I could pass out with the heat. I tried to undo some of the buttons on my jacket but mum saw me. ‘Leave your jacket alone! You keep it on until we have been to the doctors and got your new inhaler’. I could see the Health Centre on the other side of the road and I so desperately wanted to get there so I could take off my jacket and sit down.

I said to mum ‘Can we cross the road here?’ but she said ‘I have told you before! You do not cross the motorway ever! Even if you are with me. The bridge is there’ she said as she pointed towards the big concrete footbridge with the hand that held my hand. I felt a pain under my shoulder as she tugged my arm upwards and almost lifted me off the ground. ‘There is a perfectly good bridge so why should we cross the motorway? It’s dangerous!’

I wanted to say it but I daren’t. I stayed quiet for a few moments and then took a deep breath. ‘But mummy, you said we have to get my inhaler very quickly. If we cross the motorway, we will get to the doctors more quickly. It takes ten minutes longer if we go over the bridge’.

My mum stopped on the grass and for a second I thought that she was thinking about what was the best thing to do. Maybe we would cross the road now. Maybe I had said a good thing? The cars whizzed past. Then my mum spun around and she seemed to move just as quickly as the passing cars. ‘How do you know that it’s ten minutes longer if you go over the bridge? How do you know that it’s quicker to go across the road?’ She pulled my arm again and put her face close to my face. ‘Have you been across this road Irene?’ she shouted. ‘Have you been across this road when I have told you not to – many, many times?’ She was shouting so loud. It made me scared. I thought that my friends would be able to hear her shouting at me. I felt hot and scared and all I could see was her face – red and angry and moving so fast. She kept shouting and shouting – about the road, about the cars, and I felt myself shaking and beginning to cry.

‘Don’t you dare start crying Irene’ shouted mum. ‘You shouldn’t be the one crying. Don’t you know how much I worry about you? I tell you over and over again not to cross the road and still you do it! You will make me have a heart attack Irene, I swear. You will be lying in that cemetery with all the other boys and girls who ran across the road. And I will have to go there every day to visit you, because you didn’t listen and I will be the one crying Irene. Me!’

I had stifled my sobs as much as I could and now I felt all my tears rising up inside of me. I wanted to burst and cry and cry but I knew mum would get angrier. My jacket felt like it was crushing me. I was so hot and the sun shone into my eyes so that I could barely see mum as she hurried off along the roadside. My chest felt tight and my body felt weak. I tried to suck the air in but it was hot and thin and wouldn’t fill my lungs. I looked at the back of my mums head and then her feet as I fell onto the grass. I heard her shout on me to hurry up and I tried to call her name as I lay with my head on the kerb, gasping and panicking and thrashing around inside my bright red winter jacket with bells on the sleeves. All I could hear was the jingling sound they made, the silly sound of sleigh bells in summer.

Mum must have heard the bells or the loud wheezing noise I had begun to make.
‘Oh my God, Irene’ she screamed as she came running towards me. ‘Oh my God. Oh my God’ she kept saying. ‘Your inhaler... the doctor...your inhaler!’ She picked me up and began to run. The warm air rushed past me. I was desperate to take in just a little of it, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t breathe at all. I felt I was going to die, but I didn’t want to. If I could take in just a little air – but my body wouldn’t let me. I thrashed about in my mothers arms that were wrapped so tightly around me.

‘Oh my God, I’ve got to get to the doctors, Oh my God’, screamed my mother, as she sprinted along the roadside in her slippers. ‘Please help me!’ she shouted into the hot June air. I struggled and gripped her arms and used every muscle I had to try to pull some oxygen into my body. My head bounced around violently as my mum ran and ran and I knew she was moving faster than I had ever seen her move.

Suddenly she stopped and I felt her turn her body around to face the road. The sun shone onto the side of her head and I saw her face in silhouette as I lay gasping. Tears trickled down my face. My body felt limp. And mums body seemed still too - so still - and I thought that perhaps I had died and mum had come to visit me like she said. She held me so gently and she barely moved. I forgot where we were, but I knew that the sun was shining and that I was in my mum’s arms.

She rocked backwards and then lunged forwards and I knew that her feet had left the softness of the grass and dirt of the roadside and were now slamming down hard against tarmac. All I could hear now, and all I was aware of was the slapping sound of her slippers on the road and the jingling of the bells on the ends of my arms.