My eyes open and for a second she’s there, waking me to start my mornings in the garden with her. Then memory returns and crushes me all over again. I sit up, looking around, dazed.

The long shadows stretching across the ground tell me I’ve slept most of the day away. I wasted an entire day, but I desperately needed that sleep. I can’t bring myself to be too angry about it. Rubbing dinghee out of my eyes, I look up to see Pop in his spot. He’s reading a newspaper and has a fresh cuppa beside him.

‘Sorry, Pop,’ I say around a yawn and a stretch.

‘Ya needed it. Them dreams keepin ya wake?’ He stares at me from under his bushy eyebrows and I can’t meet his gaze.

‘Yeah. They gettin worse.’ I don’t want to tell him what was around the house. For the same reason me and Rhi hadn’t talked about it this morning. If we talk about it, it makes it all real somehow.

‘Well, have ya listened to any of em?’ He sounds exasperated, like I’ve done something stupid.

‘Whaddya mean?’

‘Your grandmother taught ya better than that,’ he spat. ‘She be rollin in her grave.’

He snatches up his paper and storms into the house. Still groggy, I watch him in shock. He never talks about Nan like that. I must’ve really pissed him off. But how the hell am I supposed to listen to nightmares that only left me terrified? Sure, I’d decided to accept they meant something, but it’s not like they came with a bloody map!

Half annoyed and half bemused I stand up and stretch out the kinks from sleeping in an upright position. Pop has left his now clean plate on the table, so I pick it up and walk away.

Old people are weird.

If my head wasn’t swirling with Laney, I might’ve been paying more attention to the engine rolling up behind me. A sudden acceleration has my head popping up and I stare at the dark blue commodore bearing down on me. I can see Troy’s face over the wheel and, for a blackfulla, he looks pretty red. Rage and fear hit me hard, and I get twisted up in the need to take a swing and run all at the same time. Anger wins, as it always does, and I turn to face him as he pulls up beside me. I curl my lip at him as he bounds out of his car and gets in my face.

‘What the fuck do you want?’

‘I know it was you,’ he spits, moving closer to intimidate me.

All that planning and neither Rhi nor I had thought about what we’d do if he came after me like this.

‘Who? The one you left all on her own at Potters’? That would be my twin.’

‘Admit it!’

‘You first!’