‘Let’s call in sick,’ says Pete. ‘Stick it to The Man.’

‘Thought you weren’t drinking.’

He runs a hand over his face.

‘Let’s stop for a minute,’ he says.

They drive north and east, away from the sun, towards the new moon. From the windows, the smell of dusk.

‌The Bird

‘Caz.’

She can never, ever wake up in her own time. He’s nudging her now, shaking her shoulder, and some displaced pain, some icy chip of something, is rattling in her head.

‘Hhhhm.’ It’s more a swatting away.

She did sleep a little – an hour or two maybe. He slept on the coach to the airport, on the plane, and nearly all the way from Gatwick to Brighton. She’d fought sleep, succumbing some time after Crawley and waking up just after they’d missed their stop.

‘Caz, I think there’s a bird in the room.’

She feels like digging her nails into his arm, giving him a Chinese burn. ‘Must be outside. Go to sleep.’

‘Listen.’

She drags herself up out of half sleep. Her whole body aches with the effort. The room is looking cold and grey and the sheets are dirty and freezing. A huge pile of presents lies in the middle of the floor.

‘It’s nothing. Go back to sleep.’ She pulls the pillow around her ears.

He pulls it back. ‘Listen.’

She hears a muffled flurry and then a slight thump. She knows this sound. The last time the landlord had done the gas safety inspections, the gasman had pulled a dead pigeon out of the chimney. ‘Wanna look?’ ‘Eucch, no.’ He’d chuckled, an older man.

‘Oh god.’

‘What?’

‘It’s a pigeon down the chimney.’

‘What can we do?’

‘Nothing. Go back to sleep.’

An hour later she wakes again to the sound of scuffling behind the gas fire. The windows are rattling and the top of her head’s cold. She remembers the bird.

She gets out of bed, pulls on a jumper and goes into the kitchen. The sky is white. In the fortnight since they’ve been gone the weather’s turned and the leaves have started to fall. Her bouquet’s on the worktop, sitting in green water in a jam jar. It’s going mouldy and starting to smell sweet and rotten. Even the ribbon is mouldy. His buttonhole too – they’d meant to hang it upside down, dry it out, but they’d forgotten in the hurry.

She takes sliced bread from the freezer compartment and makes toast and black coffee. When she brings the tray into the studio room he’s awake again, all eyelashes and languor. He eats the toast.

‘Is it still in there?’

She looks at him. ‘Yes.’

‘Will it be able to get out?’

‘No. I’m going to have a shower.’