Patrick was using his soft voice, the one he used with the babies. “I know, darling, I know. She seems real to you. But she’s not. Remember what the doctor said? It’s because of the tiredness, that your mind forms shapes from the shadows, making them seem real. There was no one there.”

“No one there?”

He shook his head. “I looked in the bushes, then I went to the top of the road and down to the corner in both directions. I’ve only gone and cut myself. Are there any bandages?”

“I don’t understand, Patrick. Where did she go?”

Patrick huffed and sighed. His patience was draining away. He prodded tentatively at his cut foot. “There was no sign of anyone, darling.”

“But I saw her. She was standing there, staring at me.”

“I know you think you did, Lauren. But perhaps you were just … could it have been a shadow, perhaps?”

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?