Vanya. I don’t think I ever knew her first name, but there must be someone I can ask who knows it. Teachers’ first names and outside-of-school lives are like your parents’ social-media accounts: you don’t go poking around in them, because you’re not gonna like what you see. But I need to know.

‘Mum?’ I say. She’s still staring at the TV, eyes wide, mouth open, listening to the newsreader basically repeating everything that was said at the briefing.

‘Yes, babe?’ she says, patting my knee without turning from the screen.

‘That person who asked the questions about the scientific advisor … I think Karim’s mum called her Vanya. Her voice sounded familiar.’

‘It would – she used to be your teacher at Montmorency. She left, after … well, after your residential, and started working at the local newspaper. I bumped into her once when she was covering a story at the hospital.’

My heart drops in my chest, like when you go to pick up something that’s way heavier than it 29 looks, and you go down like a loser, and everyone laughs. That’s how it feels – like the universe is cracking up at my expense, throwing the person I hate the most back into my life when it’s already being ripped up in a hurricane of explosions and pink-eyed bunnies.

‘I can’t remember her last name,’ Mum says, oblivious to my inner rage. ‘Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue.’

I chew my lip and swallow. My mouth tastes like dirt, and saying it out loud isn’t going to make that any better. ‘It’s Hoche.’

3

Glitch

We go to bed late, after checking the doors and windows are locked about a million times. Plus I have to stuff old pillowcases and towels into any potential cracks or openings around the house, including the fan vents in the bathrooms and the tiny gap where the side door isn’t quite straight in its frame. Mum wants me to board up the fireplace, Sellotape the plugs into the plug holes and nail down the toilet lids, but I finally manage to persuade her that’s a step too far. The cat flap is locked, and only opens when Betty pushes on it cos she has a special fob attached to her collar. We have a mental conversation about whether the test creature would go to the trouble of stealing Betty’s fob, just so it could get into our house, and agree that’s unlikely.