Sunday morning stays dark for a long time. Lauren hangs over the side of the bed and reaches for her pocketknife. She can still feel the sensation of the young woman’s fingers in her hair, her palm cupping her skull. Recently, Lauren’s thoughts about what this means have been swirling to the surface like silvery sediment, loose and difficult to contain. Maybe if the woman is who Lauren thinks she is, she will appear again. Maybe this means her mother is never coming back. Lauren opens the knife up in her hands: bright metal glinting from antler. She stares at her eyes reflected in the blade, then snaps it shut.

When it finally arrives, the dawn is buttery. A robin sings in the hazel outside. The crystals spin in the window and one produces a rainbow against the cream wall. When she opens the curtains, the world is white and a silence has fallen.

The jet obelisk from the make-up box has been placed carefully on her bedside table, next to the worry dolls. Her father is using the buzz saw in the garden. She can recognize the different electrical devices he uses: the buzz saw, the hedge strimmer, the lawn mower, the sander.

As she gets dressed, she takes a blue biro from her pencil case and, in front of her wardrobe mirror, she draws on her right side. A creature with many tentacles, difficult to capture. She tries to finish it but can’t draw the same way as her reflection.

Lauren trudges up to the white woods before lunchtime, her old blue joggers ballooning over her wellies. She knows Billy will be back from church before too long. Snow doesn’t make any difference. She identifies bird calls and spots robins among the branches heavy with snow. She hears a crow and hums the Welly Boot Song under her breath as she clears a path around the hut in a circle. The stones have vanished; just the indented soil is left. She wonders if Maisie has been here again, but it feels too weird a trick for her to play. Lauren chews the chapped skin on her lip and thinks her father might be hiding something. He wouldn’t come up here, though, and do this. Lauren’s coat is thick but the air still sifts through the zip and stings her cheeks. She looks up at the blue, clear sky and believes it will snow again. She feels safer with Jameson, who stays close, his nose to the ground, padding through the paths she clears through the bracken.

When Billy arrives, the light is already slipping away. He wants to play armies again. Lauren, feeling less disturbed, says they can if they use the walkie-talkies.

‘I want a dog like Jameson,’ Billy says. His nose is red, and he sounds out of breath in the cold. ‘I think he likes me better than you. Do you not, Jameson? He likes me.’