He hadn’t tumbled into a full-on panic attack yet, and if he didn’t want to, he needed to find something to count…

But he couldn’t find anything suitable in Moji’s shop. It was crammed to the rafters with all sorts of different toys and objects, but he couldn’t find a pattern in any of them. No terriers or red cars here. The woman moved closer, only six feet away now.

He couldn’t get enough distance, not mentally, not physically. There was no room to pull back the lens from close-up into panorama and observe himself. Breath became harder to find. He started having that weird everything’s-not-real feeling, a sign that he was teetering on the edge of that dreaded slippery slope.

No. He closed his eyes. No! He did not want this to happen. He did not want to fail his first time out. Not when he’d tried so hard. He searched his memory desperately for anything else, but the only other technique he could remember was visualization, and he’d been pretty sure that wasn’t going to work for him.

He’d once had a special, secret place inside his imagination, like the one Ibrahim had suggested, a place that had always made him feel at peace and alive, but it was gone now. Bulldozed. He tried to go back there with Ibrahim’s help, but it had been worse than he’d remembered: barren trees and scorched earth. He’d still recognized some of the landmarks, though. He realized he could have persisted walking through that once gentle meadow with the copse at the end if he’d wanted to, but the air had been thick with fear because he’d known what lay at the end of the path he was treading.

The pond. He couldn’t even think about the pond. So he’d run away from that place, locked the gate on it in his imagination. Buried the key.

The woman came to ask Moji a question. Brody didn’t hear what. It sounded as if she were talking underwater. Moji laid the wooden figure she’d been holding on the counter and went over to help the woman find the particular book she was looking for.

His Not Elf.

Anna.

He thought about her. He thought about the photograph on his phone, about the expression in her eyes, at once curious and open. She’d been outside when it had been taken. There’d been blurry woodland in the background. He imagined her somewhere else near woodland – on his terrace overlooking his garden, sitting at the little table and chairs. She wore the grey scarf from her photo and the purple hat with the flower on it. Her breath was coming in pure white clouds as she stared into the distance, and he realized she was looking out for someone, waiting. And then she turned and smiled at him.

Brody’s heart rate slowed, settled into a steady thump.

Even though she hadn’t been smiling in the photo she’d sent, he could see it so clearly in his imagination. The way her mouth curled and creased felt real, felt true. She was looking at him as the sun rose behind her head, its pale golden rays making the frost on the twisted, barren wisteria that clung to the side of the house sparkle.