I hurtled down Jim’s track, seeing fresh versions of my own death with every bump, bird’s eye views of me and the moped in swastika poses in the grass. The jeep wasn’t there.

The door was unlocked. Hopefully he wouldn’t mind me waiting here. I left it ajar, just to warn him.

There was a stillness inside. Everything seemed to be holding its breath – the furniture, the books, the firewood – and watching me carefully. I tapped the surfaces of things loudly, trying to feel normal. I picked out a book from the big shelf. Arabian Sands. A Bedouin guy casting a long, thin shadow on a sculpted dune. Written on the first page proper, in green biro: To Jimmie. One day we will go here, and there, and everyhwere … Molly x x x x

My heart capsized.

She had written in four others, books with far-flung bits of the world on the covers. A similar message in each one. Circles above the ‘i’s. The weird misspelling. Four kisses. I felt a crushing, guilty sadness. I’d called him a murderer. To his face.

With one of the books still in my hand, I realised why it felt odd in the house. It was tidy. No pile of crusty dishes by the sink. No bottles. Everything had been neatened, ordered. I put my head out the door. His tools had all been stacked against the front wall. Back inside, his drawings were in a pile on the table, pinned with a dull metal paperweight shaped like antlers. On top was the last one I’d seen. The human ribcage and the wings. I felt the ghosts of his thumbs on my spine.

Why had he come back here, to where it had all happened? Why hadn’t he gone to India or Bali or Argentina? All the places he read about, that they’d dreamed about.

I’ll see you again on—

Because he’d been waiting. To see her. Except he never had. I had.

And I’d told him.

Maybe that’s what Gran-gran had meant, really. That if she saw Sandy again, she’d go with him. And going with him meant—

I whisper on the wind to you but you never hear. I whisper don’t forget me and I whisper I know it wasn’t you and all you hear is the wind.

I whisper come to me. And I touch your neck and all you feel is the wind.

But she sees. The first night in the wood I moved in the bracken to get a closer look and she became still and willow-straight and I thought – she heard me. The light just poured into her. I could see her bones.

My crystal twin. My story sharer.

That night I whirled and spun over the hills, a moon dance, knowing what to do.

She can’t hear my words on the wind. No one can. So I talked to her in the water, in the air, with the only colour I know now. With the only sounds I can make now.