Behind her father’s padded arm, Lauren can only see parts of the woman. She can see parts of the dressing gown and parts of her hair. The parts are shuddering. Lauren doesn’t see how her father might know this woman, whose face looks so young but whose expression is old.

Time seems to still. Lauren’s dad smells of sweat and air from the woods. His beard and chin are touching the circle of Lauren’s braided hair. He makes her lean to his right side and she feels nauseous. ‘We’ll get you home,’ he says again. ‘Get us all home.’ The woman remains silent and Lauren looks ahead. They could be driving into nothing but the lit-up claws of trees, strange gestures. Lauren imagines the pickup eating the road as they drive, sucking it like a tarry soup, the trees trying to wave it down with their bony wooden limbs. ‘Stop wriggling,’ says her dad.

Lauren begins to say the words to ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ inside her head. She repeats the verses without thinking of their meaning, just the shape of the words and their sounds.

They reach their own stone house in minutes. Niall shovels coal from the outside bunker into an iron bucket while Lauren fiddles with the key in the lock. She can feel the woman standing behind her. Yet when she looks over her shoulder, as she opens the front door, there is only the dark rustling of trees. Lauren looks around. The woman is standing behind her father at the bunker. She has a strangely crooked body and her dressing gown is so white it almost glows in the starlight.

As they enter, the woman drifts silently into the house behind Niall. Now they are inside, her eyes remind Lauren of puddles, frozen over. The hollowed skin beneath them is the shade of bruises as she takes a seat on the pleather sofa of their back room, the place they spend time eating and watching TV. The woman looks straight ahead, almost unblinking, at the painting on the wall of a wolf in the snow.

It is hard to stop watching the woman, but Lauren has to go to the kitchen and creak open the boiler door for her father. She jerks her head round as Niall shakes the coal out of the scuttle.

‘How do you know her?’ Lauren asks. Despite the boiler starting, she still feels cold.

‘Did I say that? It’s late now; I’ll explain to you in the morning.’ His voice is distant, dreamy, like when she tries to wake him up from the sofa, the times she takes herself to bed.