I knew her mother. A woman who didn’t like other people much. You wouldn’t ask her to take in a parcel for you, to watch your kids while you popped out, for any kind of favour. I didn’t know she even had a boyfriend but she must’ve. One day she was ‘showing’ and took to wearing smocks. I asked her about the dad, a few times I asked. She said he was away, said he wasn’t into commitment, said he wasn’t interested. To be honest I think she was just saying things off the top of her head, getting rid of me kind of thing. Anyway the bairn, when she got here, was right bonny but a wild thing.

I saw her sitting on the wall between the back gardens once, hair in tangles, chewing on something and spitting it out into my back garden. I said Oi, what are you about there? She laughed at me, jumped up onto her feet and threw a handful of the stuff she was chewing into my garden. She disappeared, the little puss, the naughty toerag. I looked at what she’d been chewing. Smelt like tobacco.

I saw the child in East Park another time, chasing the swans.

When she was a teenager I saw her fighting a gang of lads. Them all in the same school uniforms. They was trying to get her on the floor. She floored them. She left them laid on the street, bleeding, bruises coming up. Five of them and she just a skinny wretch.

Around that same time I was on my way back from the shops after getting the fish in for Friday’s tea. It were siling down with rain. It was quicker to nip through the park, even with the youth gangs of them days. They didn’t like the rain so it wasn’t that likely they’d be hanging round. I saw her that evening. She was stripping off, dancing around in the rain, shaking her hair out, stamping her feet, clapping the wind between her hands. I stood off a way, getting a look at her. She noticed me, stopped short. Leaves blew down from the trees. She was naked facing me. She waved. I nodded. My hands were weighed with the carrier bags of my shopping. She turned away. I saw a leaf was stuck high up on her left shoulder. She carried on messing about in the rain. I went home, made dinner. A nice bit of fish, veg, new potatoes. My other half, at the time, had brought some cans home so we had a drink and watched the dancing show on telly while the rain kept coming down outside.

After that she became well-known. She was the one we watched on the TV. All those things she did, you know them, the people she saved in the Turkey earthquake, the rescues of them folk caught up in the typhoon year before last, the rumours starting to go round: how did she know when disasters were about to happen? How come she never got hurt? How come this and how come that? People starting fan sites about her. People calling her a demon. People asking who was her mam, her dad, where did she come from? And then the last thing, the task force sent out to get her, the soldiers coming back dead from trying to fight her, the last stand where a sniper took her down with one shot to the top left of her back. The post mortem reports, the conspiracy theories.

The end of that part of all of our lives where some of us, the ones of us not making the decisions, felt we had someone on our side.

Well you know all that. She’s gone now and I say we won’t see the likes of her again. There in’t any place for someone like that. It’s just my opinion. You can take it or leave it.