‘Not quite.’ When I’m brave enough to lift my chin to look at her, I see that she’s leaning against the chest of drawers with her arms crossed as well. ‘It’s kind of like when you’re on the bus and there’s someone sitting three rows behind you. If someone stopped you when you got off and asked you to describe them, you wouldn’t be able to, would you? Not in any detail, anyway. Maybe the colour of their hair or what coat they were wearing, but nothing specific because you weren’t paying attention to them, were you? It’s the same with us – as long as we don’t do anything to draw attention to ourselves, no one notices us.’

‘And that’s a good thing?’

‘Of course.’ She chuckles. ‘They don’t want to see us.’

‘Will they die if they do?’

Esen turns her cheek towards me and when our gaze catches, she turns away again. ‘A couple of years ago, I was doing a reap on the Pier when I heard someone say my name.’ She goes over to sit on Rosh’s bed, then leans forward and rests her forearms on her knees, looking down at her hands. ‘It took me a minute because I hadn’t seen him for years, but I realised it was my cousin’s mate.’

‘And he knew it was you? As in you, Esen.’

She nods.

‘What did you say?’

‘I panicked and tried to style it out. Put on this ridiculous, and no doubt horribly offensive, Spanish accent and made out that I didn’t know what he was on about.’

‘Did he believe you?’

‘He had to, didn’t he? I’m dead. How could it be me?’ She stops and I wait because I know there’s something she’s not telling me.

Then she says it.

‘He died in a car crash a couple days later.’

Jesus.

I can’t process this.

It’s too much.

I walk over to my bed and sit down with a tender sigh.

There’s an explanation for all of this, for why I woke up in the bookshop earlier. For Deborah and Dev and Esen. For why I don’t look the same. And it’s not that I’m dead and it’s not that I’m a grim reaper, or whatever the hell else I’m supposed to be. It’s something else. Tomorrow, I’ll go and tell Poppy I had this mad dream and we’ll laugh and draw scythes in the steamed-up window in our café.

I look down at my hand, remembering how I dug my nails into my palm until it hurt. I’m desperate to do it again, but I’m terrified that if I do, nothing will happen.

When I look up at Esen again, she’s watching me like she knows.

Like she knows this is it.

I know.