I looked harder.

Next to the washing line, one of the silver birches seemed fatter in the middle. Like a snake swallowing down an antelope. And then something happened. The right hand side of the tree grew.

It grew. And swelled. It swelled and the tree separated, until there was a black space between the birch tree and the thing that had come off it.

Thin. Silvery-white. My height.

It stayed there, on the edge of the lawn. More than mist. More than cloud. Everything seemed to slow and grow a frost. My brain had cleaved in two, separated in a mirror image of the tree and the thing.

I backed away. Something pointed stabbed me in the shoulder and I let out a mangled gasp and scream and dashed into the house.

Door slam. Handle up. Key. I turned the garden light off.

‘Polly?’ Lottie walked into the kitchen. ‘What are you doing in the dark?’ She turned the kitchen light on and came over to me, tucking some hair behind my ear.

‘There’s something …’ My teeth were rattling. I tried to slow my breathing and made myself face the back door again, then carefully pressed the light switch.

The garden flooded golden. Black shapes of the two trees and the washing line at the far end. The bird feeder and its sharp corners.

‘There’s Jane Austen on the telly,’ said Lottie.

I nodded. Jane would sort it.

The orchid was a dark, curving shadow. I turned it round, pushed it to the furthest corner of the bedside table and hunched under the covers, imagining everything in the garden fattening and separating.

It had been like chalk dust, masses of it, collected in the air and formed into an indefinable shape, something with no edges. I’d wanted to make it come into focus. It had been grainy. Diaphanous. Gauze trying to become silk. Trying to become real.

There was a slow, spreading sensation in my stomach. Like warm peanut butter, clogging me up, binding sinews and bone and veins together.

I couldn’t ignore it any longer. It wasn’t unidentified sea life. Or freak weather.

Something was here.

9

Daytime was better. Surfaces were matte and real again.

Today I didn’t even need a prod from Lottie. The sun was out and proud, the sky cloudless. Eggshell Blue. Wipe-clean Sky. Nowhere for anything to hide. I could look it in the face. Even though there had been no face. No nothing, really. It was idiotic. It wasn’t the Spanish boy. He was still alive, if being in a coma was still alive. I couldn’t find any update online. I had drunk enough white wine to make my teeth feel as if they had rotted through to the gums. It had been the wine. Probably. Tonight I would drink only extremely calming herbal teas. Probably.

I was beginning to get off on the tight, dull throbbing along the sides of my thighs in the morning, and focused on stretching them out. Girl-power strides. The air was heavy with hot, musky smells, like a house party full of fourteen-year-olds, cheap body sprays mixed together. I walked on the verge of the road, crunching spiky weeds and little flowers the colour of Post-it notes and dip-dyed hair and Love Heart sweets – and a snail, accidentally – underfoot. The birdsong was layered like last night’s stars. Best not to think about last night, or the stars, or anything. Daytime. Herbal teas.