Suddenly, I hate Alice Dawson. I hate her because she isn’t telling me something. I hate her because she’s pretty and doesn’t wear glasses or have frizzy red hair or epilepsy. I hate her so much I can barely breathe.

I accuse her of being two-faced—the ultimate insult—and we start screaming at each other. Alice marches off toward the next stile and it’s as much as I can do to keep up with her. We’re arguing the whole time: me hurling insults at Alice’s back, Alice stopping every so often to glare at me over her shoulder and lobbing them straight back. By the time we reach the crossing, we’re running out of horrible things to say to each other.

We’ve had rows before, where one or the other of us has stormed off—usually me, to be honest—but we’ve always made up in the end. Even after the really bad one we had last month. This time seems different. More final.

And that’s when everything starts to shimmer. When the clear blue of the sky and the vivid greens of the grass and trees collide in a messy blur and the only sound in my ears is the vibration of the track. The crescendo of that long metallic note filling my head with unbearable noise.

The next thing I know, I’m sitting in a puddle of wee by the side of the track and a train has stopped. But trains never stop here. It’s the middle of a field.

I’m feeling all groggy. Where’s Alice? What’s happened?

Then I see one of the sleeves of her denim jacket, caught up in the branches of a bush. Only…only it’s not just a sleeve.

Hot bile rushes out of my mouth and everything goes black.

2

NOW

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 2019

Something in the room has changed. Maybe it’s the news presenter’s tone of voice. That serious one they use when something awful has happened. Or maybe it’s the words themselves that force their way through whatever filters have been working in my head.

My shoulders stiffen. A fatal accident on a railway crossing. A young girl.

Her face flashes up in the corner of the screen before I have a chance to look away. A cheeky little smile. Dimples in her cheeks. She was only eleven. Two years younger than Alice. Her name is Elodie. Was Elodie. Such a pretty name.

I grab the remote control and turn the TV off, but the picture is still there, the words echoing in my head. Except it isn’t the picture I’ve just seen on the screen, the one of the cordoned-off railway crossing, the police cars, the solemn-faced journalist delivering the news. It’s the picture that’s always there, behind my eyes, waiting to catch me off guard, to materialize in front of me and suck me back in.