“Get up, One,” her mother said again as she left the room. Bibi refused to be called Mum or Mom or Mother; they were comrades in arms, she said – a term Sorrel had liked when she was younger, when her mother’s nickname for her was Little One. As she grew older, Bibi shortened it to One.

Sorrel shook off her thoughts. Now that night had fallen, at least they could open a window. At least this house had a window.

The house on Buttercup Avenue was the most comfortable house she could remember. They had moved often when Sorrel was a child, always looking for a place in shadow, away from the sea, rivers or ravines, preferably a house angled to catch the fluky breezes that sometimes rolled off the foothills. Bibi had a knack for assessing the comfort of an empty house. Sometimes people paid her in skynuts to do it. This house had a roof of a slightly slanted concrete slab, the law after the hurricane season of ’63 – an easy law to enforce, because after two Category Fives hit the island that year, there were no houses with other kinds of roofs left standing. The miners had sent their machines into the hills and dug down the white limestone. They scooped up the sand from rivers, and the cement factories ran day and night. The houses built after ’63 had underground cisterns to catch rainwater, though virtually useless now. The best houses had a solid impermeable membrane on the slab roof, complicated drainage systems, a ledge to hold in the turflife, and succulents planted from end to end. The houses looked like cartoon characters with square faces, blank eyes and thorny hair; Sorrel liked the intricate shapes of the succulents and the way they needed no care. Up on the roofs, these plants either lived or died. A thick bank of succulents could lower the temperature in a house by one degree. To stop people stealing them, you had to apply for a permit to own a ladder. Very few were granted.

Sorrel went into the kitchen and opened one of the makeshift shutters. Bibi had replaced the original glass windows. The house gave a little gasp, as if pressure had built up inside during the day. She waited to feel cooler air on her face, but nothing was moving outside. She gazed out, hoping to see the moon or stars, but it was too cloudy. There were always thin clouds now, which was good, because without them there would be no rain, ever, and the rays of the sun would be even more deadly, but she still sometimes wished she could see a clear sky. She fastened the window half open. If only she could sleep. Everybody else slept in the day – what was wrong with her?