COVER

CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Francine Toon grew up in Sutherland and Fife, Scotland. Her poetry, written as Francine Elena, has appeared in the Sunday Times, the Best British Poetry 2013 and 2015 anthologies (Salt) and Poetry London, among other places. Pine was longlisted for the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She lives in London and works in publishing.

DEDICATION

For Yassine

EPIGRAPH

Little girl, little girl, don’t lie to me,

Tell me, where’d you stay last night?

I stayed in the pines where the sun never shines

And I shivered when the cold winds blew.

‘In the Pines’, traditional American folk song

You ask me to believe in magic.

‘Every River’, Runrig

1

They are driving out for guising when they see her. It is the narrow part of the road that cuts through the hem of the forest. Some firs arch so densely here they block the night sky. Lauren sits high in the passenger seat, her elasticated gym shoes swinging over cans of Kick and a chewed-up tennis ball. She has braided her hair and wears it in a circle like a garland. Niall, her father, is steering their dented pickup and listening to Aerosmith. It smells of dog fur even though Jameson isn’t in the truck.

‘Is that lipstick?’ her father asks.

‘No, it’s face paint,’ Lauren says, lying. It is the one time of year she can wear something of her mother’s. It feels precious. Clandestine.

She holds a pumpkin-shaped bucket on her knees. Her face is powdered white except for the deep-red trickle at the corner of her mouth. There is no reason it can’t be face paint. Her dress is black with a cream lace collar. They bought it for her grandmother’s funeral eleven months ago, when she was nine and a half. Her arms stick out of their sleeves, reminding her that next year the dress might be too small. Her father says next year maybe they’ll stop. But for now, she is a vampire. She likes this outfit and because they live in a tiny village no one can tease her, unlike at school. In her pocket, there’s a piece of antler that folds out into a knife.

The headlights cast two white beams into the black. Up ahead there is a kink in the single-track lane, a passing place, its diamond sign growing luminous as they approach. Lauren sees a skinny figure standing in the scrub of the verge, enveloped in a large white dressing gown.

‘Jesus,’ her father says as they bump past.

‘Who’s that?’ Lauren cranes back at the dark road. The trees are thinning out.

‘Who’s what?’ replies her father and turns up the music.