The house was too big. A place to lose oneself, to lose sight of oneself. Just Birdie and me. I was the only child on the street and had no one to play with. My bike was new but it wasn’t the same on my own. I wanted a rope swing or a tree house, but Birdie said no. It didn’t take me long to find my way to Blatches Woods.

In amongst the trees, I could hide, pressing myself against the bark, enclosed in the embrace of the branches, no gaps to fill, no empty spaces, squeezed in, safe and protected.

As soon as the shop shut, I ran straight there, building insect houses and a den for myself, listening to the songbirds and scattering seeds for them, feeling the sun and the wind and the rain.

The first one was the starling. Autumn, when the leaves had started to turn. Its beak was wide open, claws curled into its breast. I dug a hole in the earth with a stick and covered it in dirt.

The next afternoon, I found two more of them. A magpie on the footpath into the woods and, next to the rotted tree stump, a bird with pink and blue feathers my book told me was a jay.

The jay’s eyes were open, black holes set in circles of brown.

I climbed up two or three branches, to survey a wider distance. I saw another jay, two speckled thrushes and a robin with its distinctive orange-red breast lying on the ground. By the fallen trunk of the oak, I saw the mottled markings and curved beak of a tawny owl. I gathered them up and laid them in a row, a rushing sound in my ears.

You were always the animal lover, not me.

I was eleven then. I did not think of myself as cruel, merely curious. An experiment of sorts. I had mixed Birdie’s rat poison with their seeds and carried it in a margarine tub to the woods because I wanted to see what would happen.

That day was hazy gold, a late-September heat wave lighting the country, our town, this street, my own patch of shadow amongst the trees.

I sat on a log, listening to the rustle of the leaves and licking sherbet from my fingers, and thought about what I had discovered.

The glory of power over living things.

17

Monday 30th July 2018, 9:21 A.M.

25 The Avenue

Evan Lockwood wore his soccer uniform every day even when he wasn’t playing soccer.

The sun seeping through the window was already heating up his bedroom, making it impossible for him to sleep. He pulled on yesterday’s socks and flicked through his collection of Panini stickers. Tried a couple of tricks with his diabolo. Cocked his head and listened.

The house was quiet. He guessed his father had left for his meeting at the bank and his mother was working in the study. His dumb idiot of a sister would still be in bed.