I am alone. As a heart is alone. As a knife in a heart is alone.

I am alone. As a tongue is alone. As a tongue on the seabed’s alone.

I am alone. As a stone is alone. As a stone in the air is alone.

– APRIL’S JOURNAL, 20 MARCH

There’s a pinhead of light in her eye. A deliberate nothing. A blank that she dares you to read. What is she thinking? A full stop with no words ahead of it. Or three: an ellipsis, three dots to mark the moment we can only imagine.

She entered the bus…

April. You entered the bus…

He waits, but she doesn’t complete it. Her hair is folded over her right eye like a pirate’s patch with the help of a frog-shaped clip. Though she is nearly twenty, half of her is twelve.

The other half is God. The Old Testament God, returning sinners to their maker to be remade. A silent God that isn’t in, doesn’t answer to prayer or special pleading. A God whom she operates through her left hand; her own sock-puppet deity.

April, I’m not the police. I want to help you, not prosecute you. I want to understand. I want to help.

I, she says. I, I, I.

Mocking him. This isn’t about you, mister. This is about me.

But she spoke. Only a vowel. Yet it’s something.

He starts again.

When were you born?

Her eyes assault him with a violent impatience.

April, he says.

Her face mimes stupidity; the shape that says, Duh.

Are you Aries or Taurus? You believe in star signs?

Her eyes flick to where a window would be, were this anything other than the interview room of a secure psychiatric unit.

He doesn’t believe in star signs. He knows some young people do. That especially for misfits like April, horoscopes can look like chapters from life’s missing instruction manual.

You believe in God, I know that. He will continue his side of the conversation for as long as it takes. We all know that. But I know more, April, about your relationship with God. I’ve read your journal.

A flinch. Then the heart-holding stillness of a creature who has given its position away to a predator.

God talks to you, yes?

Her gaze turns in on itself. He suspects she is listening to Him now. And He is saying, in April’s journal voice, Keep shtum, April. Don’t let the bastard psychologist crack your nut open.

Logan refills his glass with water.

Your silence might be seen as incriminating. Not by me. By the police. By the Crown Prosecution Service.

She shrugs.

What did you mean, as a stone in the air is alone? How is it in the air? You mean it’s falling?