‘Piss off!’ she shouts – his spell broken – and she rushes past, from shade into sunlight, and is gone. Salvi and I stare at each other for a few noiseless seconds, our eyes locked on each other’s faces. I see now exactly how he looks at me. Exactly how he always has. I see disgust and objectification. I see fetishizing and displacement. I don’t need anyone looking at me like that. I don’t want anyone looking at me like that ever again. With the blood pounding in my veins and my heart yearning for refuge, I turn from him and I flee into the jangling music and the lights and the excited screams of those enjoying the safe danger of a summer funfair in London.

CHAPTER 47

I am in a flat area of the park, which borders Seven Sisters Road and is surrounded by trees, heading for the children’s playground. The entrance to the reservoir is somewhere around here; Dad talked me through a map he brought up on his iPad a few days ago, when I pretended to be interested, but I remember enough.

I search for the hatch, while furiously dispatching hot smarting tears from my eyes. Somewhere behind me, in the distant hum and clang and blaze of the fair, Salvi lurks among neon and noise. He wouldn’t follow me, surely? He is done with me? The grass is dry and parched here; cut very short and patchy in places, long and tufty in others. Those same two boys are at the playground – basketball vests – one of them is on the swings; the other is lolling against one of the posts, smoking. What are they doing here? Perhaps they are following me. Not letting me forget my ugliness; my freakdom. There is no sign of Dad. He is not sitting in a hatch at the entrance to the reservoir, his legs dangling down, his back angled so his face catches the last of the day’s sun. I can’t even see the hatch. I’m not sure where I’m supposed to be looking. I feel exposed, foolish and fearful, here in this field, searching like a hunchback for a square-foot hole in the ground among the piebald grass.

The two boys have moved to the see-saw now; they are flicking something at each other, laughing, but their eyes are on me. I wipe the tears from my face with the back of my hand. There’s a shout of laughter from one of them – over-exaggerated and ultra-loud. The other one yells, ‘Yeah, bro!’