Heat and sorrow and blood.

My heart, made metal.

I will always be a girl, flying.

A bird had been hit. The tarmac was pale and furry.

More roadkill. On the way here we had driven past rabbits in various states of squishiness, two foxes, and a badger – huddled up as if just having a kerbside snooze, except I’d looked back and seen the great marbled gash in its head. No corpse this time though, just an explosion of feathers, like the road had coughed them up. I took one, tawny and black-striped.

There was a jeep awkwardly parked on the verge up ahead. No one was in it but the lights were still on, and when I lifted one headphone off I could hear the engine’s sleepy, constant growl. Maybe the bird had done the driver in, landing one for the wildlife team. Cut to badgers and otters cheering, waving flags. I walked around to the side of the jeep and my heart belted me in the throat.

A man in a puffer jacket, sitting on a tree stump. A mass of feathers in his hands, and in the feathers something bright pink and purple and glistening. It was turned upside down, wings hanging outwards. Fluffy legs. The speckled head was tipped back, small black beak open, near-orgasmic. Red eyelid, pillar-box red. His hands were stained red.

He was – taking it apart.

I jerked back and almost fell, putting a palm out onto the bonnet. ‘Sorry.’

His mouth moved a little and I turned and walked away very quickly, my music raging in my ears, waiting for bloody fingers to encircle my neck. Don’t look scared. Don’t run.

My breathing didn’t return to normal until I shut the front door. All the way back to the house, I had waited for the jeep to cruise by and stop just ahead of me, was planning my made-up ju-jitsu moves and wishing I had pepper spray, but not a single car had passed. I sat very close to Lottie for an hour in front of the TV, Tyger on my lap. Mother–dog panic aversion therapy.

His thumbs had been in the bird. I’d seen bone, sticking out, and blood and maybe an intestine. God. Had he hit the bird on purpose? If I’d come by a minute later would he have been chewing on its liver? The man’s eyes had been wild, tar-coloured. It was as if all of him had been drawn with a heavy pencil lead – hair, beard, the movement he’d made when he saw me.

Lottie, her eyes on the screen, murmured something about apprentices and power heels.

The feather was still in my closed palm. I kept seeing the bright red swipe above the bird’s eye. Horror Movie Red. The wings, questioning fingers. A black tail like a broken fan, lots of it smashed into the road.

This place was not right. This place was dark.

Dead. Not dead. I stood at the window, fingering the feather in my pocket.