A strange feeling rises up as though Lauren is being made to wear something she hates. Ann-Marie continues: ‘She gave me a ring with that kind of design on it one year. I loved it, but I don’t know where it’s gone. Maybe in my jewellery box. Here.’ She takes out a circular quartz pendant on a silver chain. ‘How cool is this? I remember she gave it to me for another birthday – I think it was that summer – and she said it had special powers. It was gonna be good luck, to protect me – the circle, you know? I believed in it. I used to, like, run around the garden casting spells and stuff. Sorry, Lauren.’ She holds it out. ‘Here. You should have it. I want you to.’

Lauren feels nothing as Ann-Marie fastens it around her neck. She may as well have picked it up off the pavement. ‘Talk to it. Talk to it and maybe you will be talking to her.’

‘I don’t want it,’ Lauren says, then louder, trying to tear off the necklace, ‘I DON’T WANT IT.’

The clasp snaps and the pendant springs across the room.

‘Lauren.’ Ann-Marie kneels down.

‘No.’ She flinches and ducks away.

Ann-Marie takes a deep breath. ‘I am going to try and help you – I’ve decided. It will just take some planning. I—’

‘No, I don’t need … help! She doesn’t care, she never, never cared.’ She spits out the words and wrenches open the bedroom door. She looks for somewhere to hide and be alone, scratching her nails along the bannister as she stalks the tartan carpet of the corridor. She hates the house, hates every old inch of it.

She slams herself inside the bathroom on the landing and leans her hot back against the cracked white paint of the door frame. It is a cold room, with thick towels draped on a rickety railing and green potted plants, lined up next to cloudy glass bottles that skirt the room. She moves to a faded yellow bathmat in a sea of delicately painted blue tiles that flow into tangled floral wallpaper. Still clothed, she climbs into the empty claw-foot bath. Her jeans brush against the ceramic. A copper-coloured shower head looms like a poisonous flower. Sitting with her knees tucked under her chin, she pulls out the pocketknife and snaps it open then shut, over and over, listening to the swish and click. Water drips from a corner of the ceiling. The black mildew around the edges of the tiles melts away, as does the rest of the bathroom, its wallpaper peeling in the corners. She feels her chest gently pumping air in and out as if she is observing another body. She wills herself to be like a creature in a shell at the bottom of the ocean. As she levers open the knife again she begins to whisper the words: