I brush my teeth, desperate to get rid of the sugary coating from the Coke I had in the car. I look at my reflection for what feels like the first time in days and wipe the heavy black liner from my top lid and what remains of my red lipstick. It’s one of those lipsticks that lasts for hours. I’m not even sure why I put it on for the journey. Habit, I suppose. I don’t go anywhere without my war paint on. I pull my hair into a ponytail on top of my head and wash my face, then I moisturise. My little routines are often what get me through when my anxiety starts to creep to the surface – which is why social situations are so hard; I don’t have a routine for those.

The bed is huge, a super king I suspect, and just magnifies my loneliness as I climb in, sticking to the left hand side because that’s where I always sleep. I try to shuffle to the middle but it just feels wrong somehow. I put my phone on the bedside table even though it’s off and I lie down and count backwards from a hundred in my head. It’s a method I contrived to stop myself from thinking too much before I fall asleep, otherwise the night terrors come and those are something you never quite get accustomed to. In the back of my mind I can see faces from my past that I have tried to forget so I concentrate on the numbers.

Seventy-eight. Seventy-seven. Seventy-six. Seventy-five. I see hands claw at me for help but I pull away. Seventy-four. Seventy-three. Seventy-two. I watch helplessly as the sea swallows them. Seventy-one. Seventy. Sixty-nine. Sixty-eight. I stand for a moment at the cliff’s edge and watch for them to reappear, but it never happens. I close my eyes tighter and focus harder on the numbers. Sixty-seven. Sixty-six. Sixty-five. Stop thinking. Please stop thinking …

Chapter Seven

Then

It turned out that Jasmine’s parents knew Tim from when Lisa worked in the shelter last year. Tim was homeless and staying with the Burgesses for a while until he got back on his feet. He was going to work on the Burgess house in return for a reduced rent. Until then, Tim had painted elderly people’s homes in exchange for a hot meal. Since he’d started doing that, lots of people had paid him to do odd jobs for cash and he’d largely managed to turn his life around, though he’d been living out of his car until now.