Hollie returns to the table with a milky tea. She can already smell the sugars her friend has put into it for her.

‘Thought you might need something sweet,’ Hollie says. ‘They say it’s good for shock.’

‘Thanks.’ Chloe picks up the cup and takes a sip. It’s too hot, scalding her tongue, but she still drinks it.

Hollie doesn’t say anything, not at first. Instead she lets her friend recompose herself. But Chloe knows it’s coming, the interrogation.

‘Who was it?’ Hollie asks quietly and quickly.

Chloe’s eyes flicker up to meet hers and quickly duck away again.

‘It was nothing,’ she says, ‘nobody.’

‘Well, it obviously was—’

‘Can you just leave it, Hollie?’

Hollie sighs.

She reaches out for Chloe’s hand; they’re still shaking and she doesn’t want her friend to realize. She flinches away.

‘You can’t go on like this, Chloe, you know that, don’t you?’

Chloe says nothing.

‘All these people . . . they’re in the past now.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Chloe says quickly but quietly.

‘Chloe, you can’t carry on living like this.’

‘Look, it’s fine. It was nothing today. It was just . . . it was just . . . someone I thought I—’

Hollie lowers her voice: ‘Was it anyone I knew?’

Chloe shakes her head quickly.

‘Chloe, I know you don’t mean to . . .’

Hollie is irritating her now, picking at a scab that is already healing. She always does this. Why can’t she leave the past where it belongs? Her blood is burning now, hot and red. She takes another sip of her tea and thinks of Maureen. She would understand. But she can’t even tell Hollie that, and now she wants to cry because she feels so alone, so misunderstood. She wants to be back at Elm House, in the safety and sanctuary of Low Drove. She knows now why the Kyles picked such an isolated spot. So no one can find them.

Hollie tries to take both of her hands across the table. Chloe shakes them free, pushing her chair back. She just wants to be back at the Kyles’ house.

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ Chloe says.

‘Don’t be like that.’ Chloe sees that flicker of rejection on Hollie’s face and feels better somehow, stronger. It reminds her of the same expression that woman had on the bus. Confusion, a hint of hurt sitting beneath it.

‘Can we just talk about something else?’ Chloe says.

‘Of course,’ Hollie replies, although she sounds less sure as she twists her thumbs inside her hands. ‘It’s just these people, they needn’t be ghosts, they—’

That’s it. Chloe gets up from the table. The cup clatters in its saucer, tipping over and spilling what was left onto the floor.

‘Look at this mess you’ve made,’ Chloe snaps at her friend.