Mr Dash lowers his glasses. He feels very cold. Feels sick. Feels like he would very much like to turn his back on the gypsy woman’s house.

He can’t help himself. Raises the binoculars again.

A third cat leaps up onto the windowsill. This one is a tortoiseshell, its fur a little patchy: skinny at the ribs and a little arthritic in the hip. It can only mew from one side of its mouth. There is a scar down its face, on the same side where its jaw hangs, slack. It has a drugged look. It moves floppily, awkwardly, as if dragging something heavy. The other two cats back away.

‘Here, kitty …’ mutters Mr Dash, in the silence, and feels like laughing at the absurdity of it all.

The cat turns as if it’s heard him. Through the glass, it fixes him with a baleful yellow eye. It drops the thing it has been carrying in its jaws. Noses it, playfully, like a plastic ball. Arches its back, its features locked in a rictus hiss, as the nearest of the two white cats take a step towards the find.

Mr Dash feels a grim, warm wetness spread out from his groin.

Around the binoculars, his hands turn white.

He can’t seem to tear his eyes away.

Can’t stop looking at the eyeball, complete with a rat-tail of ragged tendons, that the malformed cat pats at with its paw.

Can’t look away, even as it sinks its teeth into the glistening white orb.

He is a moment too late in closing his own eyes.

Sees the cat close its jaws, and the squirt of putrid, jellyish liquid.

Blue, he thinks, through the static in his thoughts. It was blue.

Then … Dymphna.

And then there is just the sound of running feet, and the distant slurping of the water against earth.

TWO

Victoria Avenue, Hull

She wakes with a yell, jerking upright and swinging madly at the air. Thrusts up a knee, taking her invisible attacker in the balls.

‘Dontyoufuckingdare …!’

The dream fades. Turns to pixels. To vapour. To spores.

She raises her clammy hand to her neck and seizes damp cotton. The bedsheets have formed a loose noose while she slept. The crocheted blanket has managed to bind her legs.

She coughs. Tastes red wine and microwave moussaka. Tastes ash.

Feels something wedged between tongue and cheek. Spits it into her palm. It’s a cigarette butt, half chewed and soggy. She fell asleep smoking again. Must have swallowed the ember. Fancies the day will bring a little heartburn.

The new flat, she tells herself, as consciousness creeps in. Don’t fret. The girls are all sorted. Sophia’s got the new place. The others are with Mum. Anders is dead. You’ve moved to Hull, remember …

‘Oh fuck,’ she slurs. ‘Hull.’

She hauls herself into what she hopes is a sitting position. Realizes that it’s not. She’s malfunctioned somehow. Her hair is touching carpet, dangling blackly off the edge of the bed. She fumbles for the light. Makes sense of herself. She’s at the far end of the bed. The door is on the wrong wall. Nobody’s stolen the curtains, they’re over there.