3.

Are you still listening to me? Yes. I see my eyes in your eyes.

It’s strange, but if anyone ever asked me to picture Grandad, it would always be him sitting in Grandma’s armchair. Though his office was where we made our magic, that chair was where his layers fell away. A flowery yellow chair, splashed with red and lime green. Everything else in that living room was wood or the colour of wood, but Grandma’s armchair stuck out like a tropical bird. While Grandad had rolled his eyes at it, Grandma whispered to Emily and me that it was the only thing she chose for herself when they got married and that she was determined to keep it. In the end it outlasted her, and it was the place that we found Grandad the most after she died.

And now he was gone too.

The morning after the news, I lay in bed for as long as I could. I remember a strange taste at the back of my tongue, like I’d been facing the wind with my mouth open. Grandad’s face floated before me, grey fuzz hovering around his head like a halo. The little crescent glasses. The little crooked smile. I could tell that already he was becoming a fiction. I wondered whether my brain had done that as soon as it’d registered Dad’s words, turning Grandad into something flat that could be slipped into a drawer. Filed away. His rusty smell, the pressure from his hands holding me on his knee. I was sinking, and the only person I’d have called to save me couldn’t come. I pulled the duvet over my head. I couldn’t think about it. I wouldn’t think about it.

That Saturday morning, no one came to shake me from my bed. Lying there, I began to imagine melting into the mattress, the springs wrapping around my arms and legs like weeds. All I wanted to do was to sleep, to be entirely covered by green and to see no more light. I willed and willed it to be that way, but still the sun glowed through my eyelids, and still I could hear Dad’s low grumble through the wall as he talked on the phone. As I listened to his slow and steady words, I started to experience this pulling in my chest, like elastic about to snap. I clasped at my chest but it made no difference. I needed someone to help. I wanted someone to touch me, to hold me steady.

Panting, I scrambled from the bed and burst onto the landing. I only caught a glimpse of Dad before he heaved himself from his bed, its surface scattered with papers. Some looked like letters, some looked like lists written in Dad’s overly large handwriting. But next to those, spread over the pillows, were maps. At least two of them. The one closest to the door had been marked with around nine red circles. Three of those had a big black cross through them. The landscapes were mountains, hills, rivers, valleys.

“Get out!” Dad yelled, pointing at the landing. His face was twisted oddly, like he was in pain. He slammed the door between us, and my body shook from the force. I’d never heard him so loud.

“David? What are you doing?” Mum’s voice called from the kitchen. I found her standing by the sink, her hair all frizzed up on one side. I stood next to her, one hand on my heart, my tongue ready to click.

Her fingers grazed my elbow. “David, your arm, it’s freezing. Go in the living room. Give me some space to think.” She led me to the sofa and switched the TV onto a children’s channel, stuff meant for younger kids than me. Though my eyes stung, the garish cartoon colours seemed to numb the ache in the back of my chest, the thumping in my ears. Soon Emily joined me, dressed in a white dressing gown, her face as pink and puffy as a birthday balloon. She reached out and put her arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry,” she whispered, “I’ve got you.” Without even thinking about it I leaned in. She smelled of coconuts and sugar, and for some reason this made me want to cry.

Neither Mum nor Dad said anything more about what had happened. It was as if each of us were living in our own little bubbles and bouncing off each other if we got too close. I pressed myself into Emily, my eyes closed against the feeling in the house, and aware of every thud of my heart. Dad shut himself off in their bedroom with his papers and Mum rattled around the house, moving random objects and piles of clothing from room to room.

That afternoon, the callers came.

It started at midday. The first time, Mum went straight to answer it, but after peering through the peephole released the handle and crept back into the living room. “Don’t answer it, Emily,” she whispered, her finger pressed to her lips. “Scavengers. They’ll leave a flyer; they always do.” After that, when the knocks came Mum peeked through the net curtain until whoever it was had disappeared again, blocking my view of the street. It wasn’t until evening when they dropped something through the letterbox that Mum leapt towards the door to retrieve it. Still wrapped in Emily’s dressing gown, I took the opportunity to leap from her arms and press my face to the window. “David, don’t!” Emily stepped behind me and pulled me back by my shoulder, but not before I caught sight of two men, dressed in pale blue fleeces, climbing into a car together. One of them had a phone pressed to his cheek and was rubbing the back of his neck. Mum came back into the room with whatever they’d posted torn into tiny pieces. “Vultures. Can’t believe they’re here already,” she muttered. “Grief-feeders. Don’t they have any shame?”

After that, more callers came to the house, but Mum didn’t hide from those. They were the sort I’d seen before, men and women who eyed the curbside mounds fearfully, their faces pale and strained, as they held up photos and repeated, “Please, please, have you seen my son?” Or, “This is my sister, she was last sighted around here – have you seen her?” Mum always returned to the living room with her faced flushed and a strangely pinched mouth as if trying to hold something in. She’d often take a copy of the missing person’s photograph and look at it for hours, her lips pursed as if the face teetered on the edge of her memory, but it never came to anything, and all the photographs ended up in the recycling.

That day, I could hear her telling the door-steppers about Grandad, about how we’d lost someone too, and how dreadful it was. At one point Dad stumped down the stairs and the door-stepper reached out to grasp his wrist. His eyes opened wide as he listened to the small woman with the thin mouth, a photograph of a young man thrust in his face.

Now.

Slipping behind Dad, I scurried up the stairs on all fours and pushed open the door to Mum and Dad’s bedroom. “No,” I whispered. The bed was clear. Where were the maps? The letters? Desperately I flung open Dad’s clothes drawers, sticking my arm right to the back, before throwing myself on the carpet and stretching under the bed. Nothing – just dust and shoes.

Dad would be back in a minute. I only had a few seconds. I needed to know where Grandad had gone. What’d happened. How it’d all gone wrong.

His bedside cabinet.

I crawled up to it and opened the door with a creak. There. The top shelf was stacked with large paper envelopes. Many of them were stuffed to capacity, their aged corners frayed and disintegrating. I grabbed a handful from the top. All were labelled with Grandad’s swirling script. Most words had smudged and I couldn’t make them out, until one small envelope slipped from the pile. Unlike the others, this one was clean, crisp, and had only one word written on its face: ‘David.’

“David!” Dad loomed above me, his eyes hidden beneath his brows. A broad hand extended towards me, palm up. It was dirty, its lines scored with soil. “Give that to me, now.” His arm shook.

“It’s got my name on it. It’s mine, Dad.”

He took a step closer to me so his knee was against my shoulder. “It’s not for you,” his voice was softer now. “It’s not for you.” And just like that, the envelope was in his hands, and in his pocket.

I didn’t see Dad again until Sunday morning. I didn’t ask Mum about the envelope from Grandad. When I remembered what’d happened with Dad, my face would grow hot. There were no words for what I was feeling. I didn’t know what it meant. What had Grandad wanted to tell me? Why had he left an envelope for me at all? And what else had he left behind?

Lying in bed, I heard Dad through the bedroom door.

“…Shouldn’t be long, just grabbing a few things.”

“They wouldn’t start sorting through his things now, surely?” Mum whispered.

“I don’t know. They have a key, don’t they?”

“They wouldn’t dare.”

“I’ll only be a couple of hours.”

As if yanked by elastic, I ran to my bedroom door and opened it just enough to see the back of Dad’s head as he descended the stairs. “Take me, Dad.”

He turned around. His beard, normally reddish brown, was threaded with grey like a dying bush. His eyes were wide. “No. Stay with Mum. I won’t be long.”

“I want to go.” I opened the door fully and stood at the top of the stairs. For a moment, I felt so light that I considered leaping to him from the top step. In that brief second, I was weightless, and Dad must’ve seen it too because he took a step towards me, his arms held up as if to catch me.

“David, what–”

“Please.” Even my voice was thin, insubstantial. I gripped the banister.

Dad looked at Mum, who was staring at me, her chest heaving. Her brow seemed to have as many creases in it as tree bark. “Maybe take him, William.”

Dad’s arms were still aloft when he replied, his voice soft. “OK, David, it’s all right. Keep your PJs on, just choose some trainers and let’s go.”

Dad ushered me to the car and locked the door gently behind us. Across the street, a woman with curly grey hair was standing on her lawn with a silver watering can. Mum talked to her sometimes, always loudly, always laughing too much. All her flowers were at the very front edge of her garden, which meant that she had to stand in the middle of the street to tend them. Sometimes they became partially buried under abandoned bouquets, so she’d gently nudge them into the road with a toe, eyeing up the neighbours to see if they were watching. But that morning, as I watched her through the car window, I thought that if she’d lived with someone, they might have pointed out that her watering can was empty and she wasn’t helping the flowers at all – no matter how many times she tipped it.

“We’re just going for a few things.” Dad didn’t look at me when he spoke. It was as if he was speaking to someone outside the car, through the driver’s window. I knew the trees and farms we passed like the cracks in my bedroom wall. Left here. Around the big fir trees. Along the sloping road that arches up at the shepherd’s gate. On towards the higgledy-piggledy sheds. Past the allotments, wild and untended.

About half an hour later, Dad pulled up outside the house in silence. A tall, three-story terraced house, old, grey, flaking white. A bright blue front door, chipped. Number 63. The backs of photo frames rested against the window. I could almost see Grandad’s face hovering above them through the net curtain, where it should have been. It looked different. Cold. Dead.

“We’re just going in for ten minutes,” Dad said. “The house is empty now. I need some paperwork from his office. If it’s too much for you to be inside, you can wait in the car. Does that sound OK?”

“It’s fine.” I nodded and unbuckled my seatbelt.

Dad’s eyes were piercing beneath his reddish eyebrows. I turned away. “David, you do understand what’s happened, don’t you? He’s gone. He’s not coming back this time.”

His face was inches from mine. And just as I noticed that the dark hollows below his eyes were just like Grandad’s had been, something broke, and I fell into myself, cascading downwards into darkness. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think.

But I could move.

I nodded and kept my eyes on the gearstick. Dad released one long stream of air through his lips before pressing his hands over his face. One, two, three deep breaths. I felt myself piece back together. Was he hiding from me behind his palms? He held them there for so long that I got out of the car and waited at the front door, my hand reaching up to hold the brass knocker. Dad followed a few seconds later, a large and jangling set of keys clutched in his fist. The key between his trembling fingers was small and shiny silver, as if new.

The front door opened onto a long purple hallway, from which three doorways led to the living room, dining room, and kitchen. But all the doors were closed, and all the lights were switched off. I’d never seen the place so dark and still, even in the weeks after Grandma died. That had only been a year ago. I couldn’t remember much of her last days, only snapshots sticking out of ordinary days like shards of glass. Grandma in the hospital bed, reaching out for my hand. The strange, astringent scent of her skin that reminded me of the bottle of green in our bathroom. And Grandad’s face as he sat on the only chair in the hospital room, bewildered, as if he couldn’t understand what was happening.

In the months that followed her funeral, we didn’t see Grandad much. Dad moved in with him for a while. When I asked Mum where Dad had gone, she chewed the inside of her cheek and said, “He’s gone to keep your Grandad on his feet.” I didn’t understand what she meant, but something in her tone made me not want to ask again. One Sunday a few weeks later, after an afternoon of banging and swearing in the kitchen, she drove us to Grandad’s house and let herself in with the extra key on her fob. “William,” she called down the hallway, “I can’t do it anymore, I need a break.” Dad led her through to the kitchen while Emily and I hovered in the doorway to the living room. Grandad was sitting in Grandma’s chair, the yellow flowery one next to the sideboard crammed with photos and sculptures of shepherdesses and little boys in wide-brimmed hats. Grandad’s hands were palm-up on the arms of the chair and he stared blankly ahead at the switched-off TV. There were no lamps on, and the late afternoon light through the net curtains turned everything blue.

Emily hung back, swinging on her heels behind the door and peering out with saucer eyes. She gripped a handful of my t-shirt as if holding back a dog, but whatever she thought she sensed, I didn’t pick it up, so I strode in – right up to Grandad’s side. He didn’t turn to look at me, but his lips squeezed together, so he knew I was there. Grandad had an old, fading map spread across his lap, so I carefully set it onto the floor before climbing onto his knee and wrapping an arm around his neck. His radio sat on the sideboard next to the chair, so I flicked it on, and the low murmur of an orchestra poured from its speakers. Something about Grandad’s stillness and the cold of his flesh frightened me a little, so I leaned into his chest and closed my eyes, just so I could pretend everything was normal. A few seconds later, his arms were around me and squeezing me so hard that it hurt. I let out a little cry and gasped for a breath but he still didn’t stop. I turned my head as much as I could to see if Emily could help. By now, she was sitting on a footstool by Grandad’s feet, tilting a gold compass this way and that. She wasn’t looking.

Grandad stifled a sob, and whispered into my ear, “You never know when it’s time to say goodbye, Bumblebee. No one tells you. But you know that I love you, don’t you, my special one?” I nodded and he relaxed his arms enough for me to breathe normally again. I burrowed my face into his jumper and took in that strange, rusty scent that was entirely his.

But now, a year later, now that he too was gone, I’d never do that again. Everything that brought the place to life was a memory.

As I followed Dad into the house, the air transformed from the crisp December bite to a strange bitter smell. It was like walking into cobwebs. It didn’t even feel like Grandad’s house at all. It was as if an alien squatted there now, a man made of dust, and rot, and damp. I took a step back. Dad’s hand met my shoulder blades and I looked into his face to find a half-smile. He gave me a little push. “Why don’t you collect some photos from Grandad’s bedroom? On the chest of drawers. You know the ones. He’d want you to.”

From that ominous corridor, the landing above seemed illuminated. Without a word, I bent over and ascended the stairs like a spider, planting my hands and feet silently into the carpet. A green vase of flowers with plush, white petals sat on the windowsill – too blooming, too new. One broke off between my fingers, and I laid it against the window reverently so the sun shone through the plastic. It didn’t feel right to be here. Every footstep disturbed a fine layer of dust, marking it forever. Even sound could trouble the dust. The memory.

Resting my hands on the bedroom door, I pushed it gently to the dragging sound of wood on carpet. The darkness oozed out, and a rush of damp washed over me in a wave.

I’d been in that room hundreds of times. Hundreds. Grandma rolling me up in the king-size duvet. Grandma showing me through her bottom drawer, where she kept her knick-knacks – jewellery boxes with women dancing inside them, little pieces of bone china with gold inscriptions, drawings of constellations that Grandad had done for her, gold chains in velvet boxes. And sometimes, while everyone else talked in the living room downstairs, I’d come up on my own and fiddle through the drawers of the oak writing bureau, flipping up the lid as high as I could and dabbing the thick black fountain pens on the brown and crinkly paper.

But now, I didn’t even want to turn on the light.

I didn’t know what I’d see. I knew the room was empty, that neither Grandad nor Grandma would be there. But something hung in the air, thick and wet, and I didn’t want it to touch me.

But I knew I had to. I had something I needed to find.

Behind me, I heard the thump thump thump of Dad coming up the stairs, so I quickly reached up the wall and flicked on the light. The duvet was askew, the pillows standing flat against the headboard. A blanket lay draped over the foot of the bed and across the floor. The curtains were closed. Everything looked darker, as if viewed through a grey lens. Five bluebottles crawled across the empty white sheet. The window looked all fogged up, like the bathroom window if you didn’t open it after a shower. Everything was so very still, like debris sunken to the bottom of a tank of water. It was hard to breathe.

The floorboards behind me creaked as Dad made his way to Grandad’s study, and I lurched forwards. The book. The Key Verbatinea.

As quietly as I could, I slid open the top drawer of Grandad’s bedside cabinet. The place where “All the most special things are kept, so you dream about them,” he used to say. But the book wasn’t there. My hand fumbled against paperbacks and lotion bottles and dusty glasses cases. It was gone. Our special book was gone. That tightening in my chest returning, I stood up and started to search through the chest of drawers, but it wasn’t there either. Why wasn’t it here? The room began to spin. I needed that book. Our book of words. The book that joined us.

Through the wall, in Grandad’s office, something slammed.

My nails dug deeply into the skin on my arms. It helped to steady me. To remind me that I was still here. I still existed. That this was real. Could Grandad have taken the book with him, on his research trip?

“Nearly done, David?” Dad’s voice rumbled through the wall.

Pushing the book from my mind, I looked up. The chest of drawers was crammed with silver photo-frames. Some were faces I knew: Jordie, the border collie whose smooth back had helped me stand for the first time; a slim Dad and Mum sitting on a wall at the beach; one of us all together at a restaurant in Scarborough. One was on my birthday almost a year before, where I was leaning over a cake with nine candles. It was the last time we were all together before Grandma fell and went to live in hospital. But the rest of the photos contained people I didn’t know at all, and it troubled me that I hadn’t noticed before that Grandad and Grandma’s bedroom – the most private place I could imagine – was home to the faces of strangers. Strangers who’d watched me go through the secret bottom drawer with Grandma, and scratch my name in the underside of the writing bureau where I thought no one would find it.

I could only just about reach the frames at the back. I picked one up with Grandad standing in the centre of a row of men who all looked very much like him. Grey hair. Little glasses. White coats. They stood at the front of some sort of theatre, with a big white illuminated square behind them. It had writing on it, but it was all blurry. Grandad’s hair looked fuzzier than I remembered, and stood up in tufts like mine. His smile was wide, his lips pressed shut.

I put that one back. Dad hadn’t said what pictures he’d wanted me to get, but I didn’t think that one was right. One with Grandma? Using the tips of my fingers, I edged one of the photos at the back towards the front. Grandma and Grandad together, with Emily squeezed between them. Emily must’ve only been two or three, and her chubby round face stared at the camera, her cheeks red and flushed. Grandma was laughing at something happening off-camera, a short glass of something dark in her hand. That one. Next to it was a small, framed photo of Grandad clad in waterproofs and standing in front of a tall, bald mountain. On either side of the lilac slope were the sort of trees that reminded me of Christmas. His mouth was a thin firm line, his eyes squinting against a low sun. I touched his face with a fingertip, and my eyes started to sting.

As I pulled them both down from the chest of drawers, something dark caught my eye. A winged thing was fluttering against the wall above the wardrobe, brown and black, like the bark of a tree. It must have been at least a couple of inches across, and bumbled across the pink wallpaper like it expected to find a way out. I watched its clumsy looping warily, ready to dodge if it suddenly flew in my direction, until something in my stomach squeezed. On top of the wardrobe was a hollow that shouldn’t be there.

Usually, the space was plugged with Grandad’s yellow backpack, the one I’d last seen half-packed in his university office. It was always here when he wasn’t travelling. He said it helped him to “keep an eye on the sky.”

But now the bag was gone.

The book. The bag. What else was missing? I took three deep breaths and held my hands over my face. I needed to know. I needed to see.

As silent as I could, I made my way over to the wardrobe and teased the doors open to reveal a rainbow of fabric. Most of the dresses and flowing skirts were crushed to the left, with the more sober colours and straight lines hanging to the right. I stuck my arms in as far as they’d go to the right-hand side, feeling for a familiar knit, that rough bristle. The warmth of a round belly.

Nothing.

I stepped back and covered my mouth again. Grandad’s favourite jumper was gone. He wore that orange jumper all the time. Grandma used to laugh at him in it, and called him the Honey Monster. He told me once that it made him feel big and strong. Not long before she’d died, she sewed a shiny brass button onto the collar. It felt heavy and cold, and I liked to play with it between my fingers. He’d shake his head at it, his mouth twisted in confusion, muttering, “I have no idea why she did that. I’ll cut it off later.” But then she died, and he never did.

And now the jumper was gone. As was his bag. And our book. Why would they still be gone, if Grandad had come back?

Dad said he was dead. But maybe he wasn’t. My skin tingled. The heavy load in my head was crumbling away like rocks in an avalanche. Maybe Grandad was like the others. The ones the door-steppers look for. Maybe he was just … gone.

But why would Dad lie?

Next door, Dad slammed another drawer in Grandad’s study. At first I thought he was on the phone, but no, he was muttering to himself, as if reciting a list, and searching. The metal of a filing cabinet. The slap of paper on a table.

Slipping the small framed photo of Grandad into my pocket and hugging the other photo to my chest, I stumbled on numb legs to Grandad’s study. I’d never seen it with the bright big light on. The dark green paint that made it look like the inside of a glass bottle was streaky, and in some places I could even see the white beneath it. The room, usually meticulous, was in disarray. There was paperwork strewn across the floor, and drawers in filing cabinets hung open, the insides all mixed into a jumble. The shelves, usually filled with strange metal instruments, were bare, and the rows of heavy textbooks had been pulled down. At my feet lay a copy of the red book he’d been making notes in when I’d last seen him: Hidden Worlds. I picked it up and ran my fingers along the author’s name, Dr Francis Porter. I’d always been in awe of Grandad, having his name on a book that looked so important. I flicked through the pages. Mostly incomprehensible words like ‘string theory’ and ‘existentialist.’ But every so often there’d be a diagram that looked like one of the constellations he’d shown me through the telescope or a black and white photograph of some wooded and wild location. I turned to the back pages where I knew the photos would be and stopped dead. There, the first five photos were of the same strange purple mountain as the one in the frame in my pocket. In each photo Grandad stood or knelt with some piece of equipment I didn’t understand. One looked like a telescope. One looked like silver struts, supporting a huge sheet of glass. Or maybe it was a mirror.

The air in the study tasted very thin. I was just about to speak when I was interrupted by three loud ‘clicks’ from over my shoulder. Quick and quiet, like nails on a pane of glass. I turned so quickly that a pain shot through my neck.

“Grandad?” I whispered. But the landing behind me was empty. The only sounds were coming from Dad now. He leaned on the desk, his breath coming in large gasps. With his head tilted down like that, I couldn’t tell if he even knew I was there. He definitely hadn’t heard the clicks. I hugged the picture-frame and Hidden Worlds to my chest and approached him with a smile I couldn’t soften. I handed the book to him. “Can I keep this?” I said, “I want to read it.”

Dad stared at it as if recognising an old friend, before hurling it against the wall. “No. Never.” He leaned forwards, sobbing into his hands.

He wasn’t letting me keep anything. He’s taken my letter. Now the book. I had to be strong.

“Dad,” I whispered, “Grandad would want me to have it. Like my letter.” He looked up at me then, sharp and small-eyed, and stuck out his arm as if to slap me. I stepped back against the wall and the picture-frame tumbled from my arms. Dad’s hand was still held high when he twisted up his face and covered his mouth with his fingers. I turned away, my palms and face pressed against the pink.

Before we left, Dad sent me to the car while he collected a few of Grandad’s things. He carried them from the house in a small black bin bag tied with a red cord and flung them into the boot. We drove home in silence. I didn’t know what I’d done to upset him, but when I thought back to what had happened in the study my stomach felt hot and bloated. I kept my eyes on the world through the window and watched as the grey bricks and tall silver lamp posts bowed out to hills and hedges. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and realised that the smell of the house had seeped into my clothes. I carried it with me now.

After pulling up to the house, Dad held the handbrake for a couple of minutes, gripping the knob this way and that, as if his fingers wouldn’t settle. My hand was only a few inches from his, ready to release the seat belt. I waited, holding my breath, but he got out of the car without a word. I followed him into the house, keeping my head down as I passed a huddle of grey-haired, cardigan-ed women standing in the middle of next door’s lawn, clucking like chickens and flapping their arms like fat little wings. It didn’t even sound like English.

I raced up to my bedroom and tore open the pages of the little black notebook for the meaning of the three quick clicks but nothing matched. Chewing on a fingertip, I squeezed my eyes shut and wished, wished, that I had the Key Verbatinea. But then if I had it, Grandad wouldn’t, and perhaps he needed it more where he was, wherever that was. Could he still be out there, on his research trip? But why would Dad say he was dead, if he wasn’t? Grandad was his dad, after all. None of it made sense.

I clutched the book to my chest and repeated the moment of the three clicks in my mind. It felt like him. It did. But Dad didn’t hear it. And he hadn’t let me take the book. It was probably still resting where it’d landed, against the wall, pages askew, already being forgotten.

Mum and Emily never asked about our trip, but then if Emily had known where we’d been she’d have demanded to come too. Later that night, I found Grandad’s name in the open pages of a newspaper on the dining table, crushed between the missing persons adverts and death notices. The only page with little headlines in an otherwise stormy sea of bad news.

FRANCIS DAVID PORTER

Passed away unexpectedly on 15^th December, 2015, aged 73 years. Beloved husband, father, and grandfather, who will be greatly missed by all who knew him. In lieu of a service, Francis requested donations to be sent to the Blue Pilgrims, care of M J Hart Memorial Services, Cornerstone, Yorkshire. Telephone 01945 387457.

On the following Monday morning, Mum insisted Emily and I return to school like nothing had happened. We dropped Emily off at the high school first, and as she stepped through the gates it was as if she had cast off a dark and weighty shroud. She ran into a cluster of girls in the centre of the yard and screamed before squeezing each one in turn. After completing the ritual, they stood in a close circle, each standing on one leg, then the other, like pale flamingos in the rain.

But when Mum dropped me off at my school next door, I stood by the fence between my sister and I, waiting for the bell to ring, my eyes on my shoes and the shadow where Emily’s shroud had fallen. Every face in the schoolyard reminded me of one person. One person I had been told I wouldn’t see again, and whose end I couldn’t understand.