Anything and everything to stop her from thinking about the last time she got into a car. It had been fifteen years since she’d heard the clunk of the metal doors locking her in; since she sat on the red leather seat and looked ahead through an unbroken windscreen. No speck of blood on the glass; no one trapped behind the wheel.

She propped her suitcase against the wall and sat on its edge, felt the ancient leather sag a little under her weight. A glimmer of red in the corner of her eye, and she turned to see a robin pecking at the ground by a nearby tree. She gave a low whistle and he cocked his head, regarded her a moment, then came hopping over, stopping just shy of her foot.

“Hello.” She smiled down at the bird, watching him circle around the suitcase, looking for ants or stray crumbs. A second later and he fluttered up to land next to her, on the very edge of her case. He gave a chirrup, the ruby feathers on his breast quivering with the sound.

“No.” Emily crossed her arms. “I can’t. I absolutely cannot get into a taxi driven by a complete stranger.”

The robin gave his tail a little shake, depositing a tiny dropping down the side of the yellow leather before flying away.

“Fat lot of help you were.” Emily watched the bird loop up and over into the branches of the tree. She heard him calling out, either in warning or in search of a mate.

Robins are solitary birds. Emily looked across to the taxi rank. And they often sing at night, which makes people mistake them for nightingales.

“Oh,” she said as she stood all of a sudden, stared up at the tree. The bird was gone, but the memory of when she had first learnt about them came rushing back to the very center of her mind.

A crisp Sunday morning. Her father in the back garden, digging out his beloved vegetable patch. No matter the weather, he would be there every weekend, tidying the greenhouse, planting out seedlings or trimming back the rose bushes. Emily liked to sit and watch him, sometimes handing him a trowel or helping plant out the seeds, press them down gently with fingers that would still bear traces of the earth when she went to bed.

Another morning, heavy with snow. When she and Tyler had been taken to the very top of Primrose Hill, toboggans at the ready and misty cheers as they flung themselves down the slope. The toboggan had tripped over a rock, and she fell, with hands laid flat, only for another sledge to shoot straight across them, pushing her fingers into the ground, making her cry out in alarm.

Her father picked her up, brushing her clean of snow and turned her hands over, slipping off sodden gloves. Then he had declared all was fine, no harm done, but Emily was too afraid to get back on the toboggan, crying and asking to go home.