The woman sits motionless, staring at the painting. Her thin body under the dressing gown makes her look like a bundle of laundry. Her legs remind Lauren of a chicken’s and her skin of eggshell. There is a crookedness to her nose. It has a bruise at the bridge.

Lauren’s dad breaks white chunks of firelighters with mechanical movements. Firelighters remind Lauren of the foam casing from the internet packages he picks up at the post office. She gets them confused sometimes, but her dad says you shouldn’t burn plastic. The room is heavy, as though invisible smoke is clogging up the air.

Lauren remembers the time she rescued a bird from a cat. The bird was so sick it was tame, and sat on her shoulder, and she hoped it could be her pet. She fed it food and made a bed for it in her clothes drawer with cotton wool. But the next day, the bird was lifeless. Her father told her cats’ teeth are like poison and the bird never stood a chance. He is scrunching more newspaper and stacking kindling in an upward point, adding blocks of peat like thick slices of dark cake. He lights the fire and it burns into the silence. The white-green moss on the kindling starts to crackle and curl. Niall pulls the heavy blue curtain across the door frame. He pokes the fire again, goes over to the other side of the room and takes a bottle of whisky, nearly empty, from inside the hatch. He glugs it, slouching on the sofa. Jameson pads in and lies down by the fire. Lauren kneels and gives the spaniel’s tummy a rub. He comforts her, more than she comforts him.

Can I ask you something? Are you a vampire? Are you a kelpie?

She doesn’t say these words aloud, but instead looks over to her dad and says to the woman: ‘It’s OK. We’ll look after you.’

The pale young woman is still staring at the wall, making Lauren wonder if she is deaf or speaks any English at all. As if reading her thoughts, the woman looks her in the eyes and smiles.

Lauren looks away. ‘Dad, I’m hungry.’ She can’t help but glance back. There is something unearthly about the fabric of this woman’s dressing gown and the colour of her hair. Unearthly and yet familiar. Perhaps it is the way she smelled when she was sitting close to Lauren in the pickup truck. Musky, warm blood and soil, like a nocturnal animal that has come out from its den. The woman sits still but shifts around in Lauren’s mind. Her eyes are huge and black. When Lauren turns away, she can feel the eyes burying into her back.

‘Dad, what are we eating the night?’ She wants things to be normal.