Vivian stretched her legs out and heard her knees click. ‘Maybe I’m over-reacting. Maybe Thea’s just forgotten to phone. For over a week. Maybe I’ve become one of those terrible grasping mothers who can’t let their daughter out of their sight for a second. The police already think I’m a mad old conspiracy theorist. Maybe I am.’

Delia smiled.

Vivian finished the coffee, but really wanted something stronger. She could almost imagine what Thea would have said if she’d caught them both drinking before they’d even digested breakfast. She’d get that expression on her face, the one she’d practised since she was a little girl, the frown of disapproval at whatever her mad mother was doing at that moment.

She had been a bit of a mad mother, she had to admit. The itinerant lifestyle, the shared houses, sudden moves to random places where the next protest was; the unending succession of well-intentioned, mostly stoned strangers who had wandered in and out of their lives. So yes, she may have been mad, but she had also been constant. Constantly there. Constantly around when needed, when called upon. She had been good at that at least.

The announcement screen switched to ‘Train Due’. People started to shuffle closer to the platform edge, bags were picked up, tickets found.

‘I don’t know what I expect to do when I get there,’ she said to Delia, suddenly wanting to stay there on the platform, safe amongst all these people, the pigeons, the litter.

‘You’ll think of something. You generally do,’ Delia squeezed her hand and Vivian squeezed back hard before quickly boarding the train.

She watched the station and Delia slip past her, then the city, then the suburbs, then the green belt until the landscape opened up and swallowed the little train that was taking her away.

To the island.

Chapter 40

The wind twisted Delores’s hair, a tongue of fire stretching out to see what else it could burn and destroy.

The Sleep Centre was damaged and crying. Smoke poured out from the punctured side of the Client Bubble, and streaks of black ran down from it: thick, smudgy mascara trails. Thea pressed her face up to the window of the car. She had heard of the chaos that had happened here, but actually seeing it smouldering in the snow in front of her made her gape.

Kyle opened the car door for her. For a moment, she thought she might refuse to get out, but then she realized they’d probably just drag her and she preferred to meet Delores again with some kind of dignity still intact. Her trainers sank into the snow and she could feel the cold start to numb her toes, her breath misting out in front of her.