There was a knock on the door then, and Mum jumped half out of her skin and Henry said, “I’ll get it,” and when he walked past us in the doorway, he said, “Come back. Now.”

He opened the door to two police officers, fingers bothering their uniforms and worrying their hats while they waited for him to invite them in. They must have a script, I figured, for times like this. They must be nervous, hearts pounding, like actors stepping onto a stage. The flowers were still bright in our yard, the lawn still green, all the warm color of the morning, and when Mum stood up to meet them, there was no color in her face at all.

“Novo,” I said, and I gripped his hand. “Can I be back here and still be with you?”

He smiled. “I hope so. I hope you can have everything you want. And I already told you. I’ll be here,” and he pushed me gently into the room where Henry was waiting, and Mum with her back turned was talking quietly to the nervous police.

She said, “I’ve been calling and calling. Like twenty times. And I’ve left messages. Nothing.”

She dropped her forehead so it rested on the table and she spoke out loud to me, even though she couldn’t know that I was right there, behind her, listening. “This is why you should check your phone, Jude. Why don’t you just answer your bloody phone?”

TWENTY-ONE

Through the door and the light changed, and my senses felt sharper, heavier, more defined. I looked at my bare feet on the kitchen floor. I felt myself in my body like a lead weight, like a rock, and I thought, Really, where was I if I wasn’t in here?

“It’s broken, Mum,” I said. “My phone’s broken,” and the kitchen spun and the police looked up like startled foxes and she was out of her chair and all over me, her hands on my shoulders, forehead to forehead, her hands on my face, and Henry smiled.

“What?” she said.

“You were calling me. But my phone’s messed up. I think you forgot.”

She didn’t let go of me. Everyone was talking and I was back, I knew I was back, and I looked for Novo in the doorway behind me but he wasn’t there.

“Where have you been?” Mum said. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I’m not sure,” I told her, because it was the truth.

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Yeah. I’m okay. I’m fine.”

She was smiling and crying and laughing and the police were getting up, gathering their things, and Henry was in a very still place in the corner of the kitchen, watching me.