After a while the room was close to dark and Splints’s big head rested on my leg, the weight of him making my toes tingle. Sometimes he’d lick his nose and sigh. I stayed where I was. When it was very dark a paw thumped through the duvet onto my arm. He whined.

I got up, shut the back door and fed him.

The next day I went to school.

So, here I am. Here. Not here.

Everything’s here and not here.

You.

The house.

Me.

I don’t know what anything is anymore.

DAY 15

SUNDAY

WHEN THE FRIDGE is clean there’s nothing to distract from outside.

I’ve left the washing on the line and it’s gone stiff and crusty and no longer flutters in the wind. I think it’d snap if I folded it. I use the clotheshorse in the kitchen instead. There’s not much washing anyway.

I take your debit card and buy things. Bread, milk, cheese, eucalyptus spray, incense sticks, lavender spray, mosquito coils, three sonic oil vaporizers, ten bottles of essential oils, a large bottle of bleach, gaffer tape, some fruit, dog food, pot noodles and toilet paper.

THE OLD LADY next door sits on her porch and watches me lugging stuff home. Watching, pretending she’s not, looking over her teacup. I walk past like she’s not there. Like everything’s normal.

I hold my breath and stuff rolled towels under the shed door. You’re a smart kid, use your brain. I tip the bleach on the towels.

The incense sticks I place around the back door, on the outside. The smokiness works its way inside anyway, making Splinter sneeze and leaving me with a stuffy feeling and a dull ache to either side of my nose.

I gaffer the window and door cracks of the old shed. I don’t look in.

I’m glad of the cold.

I set up the oil vaporizers inside. One next to the front door, one next to the back door and one in the kitchen. The oils have names: Energy, Sleep, Breathe Easy, Stress Relief . . . The instructions say to add five to seven drops at a time. I add twenty. They go for up to ten hours. I’ll fill them every morning, when I get home from school and before bed. They’ll just keep going.

The house isn’t too bad now, if you don’t mind rose geranium, peppermint and lavender. And that other smell, heavy underneath.

I watch a show about sharks, one with scary music. I stare at the giant mean-eyed, sharp-toothed fish as a diver opens packets of something yellow and oily-looking. The sharks jerk away and disappear into the camouflage of sea so quickly I have to look at the diver to check it’s not in fast-forward. The biggest predator in the oceans and the smell of one of them dead makes them flee.