A hand. That’s what it is. A hand.

She feels her tongue make contact with the roof of her mouth. It seems to stick there, spreading the strange flavor across her palate. For a moment she does not think she will be able to pull her tongue free but slowly, there it comes, and with it a loud sticking noise that seems to echo in her ears.

She breathes in and hears something rattle at the back of her throat. It is a noise she knows although she cannot place it. But she does not like it and wishes she was not hearing it. It is a noise that causes images to flash behind her closed eyes. Images of a darkened room, a small figure under a duvet, tiny blue hummingbirds, and waiting: waiting for something she knows will happen but wishes with all her heart would not. It is an image that squeezes something deep inside her yet she does not know whether the feeling belongs to the past or the present.

Somebody is whispering into her ear. Their breath is soft, moist, reassuring, even though the words are slippery, unable to form shapes she recognizes. But it is a voice that warms the inside of her head, filling it with something familiar, something she wants more of even though she is not sure exactly what it is.

She breathes out and there is a sense of release in letting the air go.

She feels something warm being smoothed across her forehead, soft as a feather, brushing across her skin. And then a similar sensation on the back of her hand. She wonders if time has reversed, if she is a little girl again, back in the white wooden bed in the flat above the shop, recovering from scarlet fever, her mother keeping vigil by her side, feeding her sips of sugary drinks, singing her songs, stroking her hair.

She is filled, suddenly, with a sense that there is something she ought to do—something she needs to do—but hard as she tries, she cannot remember what it is. It is somewhere just out of reach, beyond her grasp, and yet she is sure it is there. And just as she is about to give up looking for it, she feels a trickle of air pass slowly through her lips, feels it suck the moisture out of her mouth on its way down her windpipe, feels her chest expand to make room for it, and there is a sense of relief that her body has found the answer.

Emerging out of the darkness, a scene filters into view behind her closed eyes.

It is a meadow, grasses high, variegated flowers in bloom. A cloudless sky, sun shining brightly, bathing the air in a hazy yellow hue. And beneath the blue sky and the burnished sun, in the middle of the meadow, four girls are dancing.

Lily, Jess, Mia, Phoebe. All of them children, all of them dancing, holding hands in a circle, daisy chains in their hair like woodland nymphs, their movements illuminated by an ethereal glow.