It’s been less than two weeks since Alice died, and I don’t want to talk to a counselor, but Mum and Dad said I have to. They said it’s part of the “healing process.” I’ve already spoken to a police psychologist. I’ve had enough of all these questions.

“Can you describe how the nightmare starts?”

She won’t give up. I know that much.

“We’ve just gone through the kissing gate and we’re heading for the gap in the hedge.”

She gives an encouraging nod. I can’t explain to her how strange the dream is. Because on the actual walk it used to take us ages to find the right gap. Even though we’d done it loads of times, that first part was always the trickiest, because the field was so huge and the hedge so long. It always looked different to how we remembered it the time before, depending on the length of time between each walk, the weather on the day, and what work the farmer had been doing in the field.

“What else can you remember?”

My chest flutters. Is she still talking about the dream? How do I know that all that stuff she said about confidentiality and me being able to say anything at all is true? How do I know she’s not feeding everything I say straight back to the police? This could be some kind of trick, getting me to talk about my nightmare and then cleverly introducing new questions about the actual day. Because nobody seems to believe I can’t remember anything. Even Mum and Dad keep asking me questions, and they know I can’t remember what happens before a big seizure.

“The scarecrow is much nearer,” I say.

She raises her left eyebrow. “Much nearer than…?”

“Much nearer than it should be.” I reach for a tissue and pretend to blow my nose. “Nearer than it is in real life,” I add, to make her realize that we’re still talking about the nightmare here and nothing else.

“Dreams are funny like that, aren’t they?” she says. “Familiar but strange at the same time.”

“Yes.”

“How does the scarecrow make you feel, Lizzie?”

“Frightened. It looks like…”

My eyes skate away from Angela Harris’s face and land on the painting behind her. The one of the snow-capped mountains.

“Alice always said it looked like a dead man on a stick.”

My eyes are now glued to the painting. I don’t like speaking of Alice in the past tense. At least in the dream, she’s still alive.

“In the dream, it really is a dead man. But Alice doesn’t believe me.”

If I tell her the truth, that the scarecrow of my dreams looks like Alice’s corpse with all the smashed bits of her body stitched back together, she’ll think I’m some kind of psycho.

“Then what happens?”