She could still see the texture of the woman’s skin, the dirty hair. The slow smile, and the way the sun through the branches laid a dark pattern on her face. Definitely not a shadow.

“Look at this cut. Do you think I need to go to hospital?” said Patrick.

The wound on his foot had two lips, a slashed red mouth. He eased it open and dark blood oozed out thickly, speckled with black pavement grit.

If he wasn’t chasing the woman, if he couldn’t find her, then maybe she was still there, hiding nearby. Lauren crept closer to the door and peered around him, searched the place where, only a minute or two ago, the woman had stood, crouched, stood again. Nothing.

“Is it tetanus, for this sort of thing? Have I had a booster? I can’t remember.”

Patrick gripped the doorframe and hopped into the room, struggled over to the couch. He took several tissues from the box and wadded them up, winced as he pressed them to the wound.

“Hey,” he said to Lauren, “come here,” but she didn’t move. She stood in the open doorway, searching the greenery opposite.

“I must have imagined … I suppose I can’t have really seen her …” What did it mean? What was wrong with her? How could her brain conjure something that seemed so real, something laden with so much horrifying detail, and yet there be nothing there at all?

The screeching drone in her head twisted its volume to piercing and painful, starting up from nothing, surging to everything like waves of feedback so high-pitched that she bent at the waist, clutched at her ears, screwed up her eyes against it. She managed to shut the door and half fell onto the couch next to Patrick, who put his arm around her. Deep breaths, she told herself. Try to stay present. Beige carpet, she thought, blue couch. Black jogging bottoms. She relaxed slightly, uncurled, and as she held onto him the drone faded away. They fitted together so perfectly, like they always had; they were just the right shape. His warmth, his skin and his smell.

“You’re shaking, darling,” said Patrick. “Don’t worry. It’s OK now. Shh. Just the way the shadows fell, made you think it was a woman out there. There’s nothing to be afraid of. When the doctor explained it to me he said that if you were tired enough, your brain starts to dream even though you’re awake. That’s why it seems so like a nightmare; because it really is one.”

“I called the police. They’re on the way.”

“You did what? Why?”

He really hadn’t seen it. Seen her, the woman from the hospital, the woman in the bushes. But Lauren had, solid and real as the trees themselves; the eyes still glared at her when she closed her own, the image burned there like she’d looked at the sun too long. She was going mad, she must be. That or the woman was some kind of witch, some kind of demon who could disappear at will. And that was not possible, which meant she was back around at mad again. Just a shadow. Jumping at shadows. She really needed to get some sleep.