She picks her way downstairs on tiptoe, every moment expecting to hear keys in the lock. Her breath is catching in little hiccups. She feels like she might faint, but also giddy with the strangeness of it all. Dee catches the barest glimpse of a dark slender shape, watching her from the corner of the living room and her heart stops for a moment.

“Here, kitty, kitty,” she whispers, to break the thick silence of the room. “Have you seen a little girl?” But there’s nothing in the corner but shadow and dust. Either the cat has slunk away or it was never there. Dee makes her way to the window, giving a little hoarse cry as the ugly, burry blue rug slips under her feet. She climbs out, swearing as she knocks her head against the frame, and pulls the sash down with relief, closing the house up behind her. The night air seems sweet and soft, the darkening sky is wonderful.

She raises the plywood with shaking hands. The old nails are bent, rusted and useless. Dee removes them gently. She nails the plywood back in place using the nails from her pocket. They are silver and sharp, fresh from the hardware store. The sound makes her think of coffins and she shakes herself. There is no time to lose focus. She must be precise hammering the new nails into the old holes. She must be quick, and finish while no one is passing to hear the blows or see her stumbling out of the creeper in the coming night.

When she gets back to her house she finds that she is shaking all over, like she has a fever. And in fact she does feel cold. She lights the wood burner and crouches by it, seized by cramps and chills. She used to think she was sick, when this came on. But she has come to know her body’s ways of expelling distress.

Lulu is not in the house. Dee realizes now that she had been thinking of her sister as very close. Had been imagining her breathing nearby. She has been reduced to wishing her sister a prisoner there. It seems so unfair, to have been driven to that. Feeling slices at her throat. She tries to order her mind. If Lulu is not there, she is somewhere else.

“The weekend place,” Dee whispers. That is the answer, it must be.

She clasps her hands before her mouth and whispers into them, watching the heat rise red behind the glass, the building flame.

I’m coming, she promises.

OLIVIA

I was at the window, looking for the tabby, when the sound began again. It’s like bluebottles, only sharper, like a little needle in my head. I raced through the house. The tiny voice whined and stabbed. I bit open a couch cushion and clawed open a pillow in the bedroom. Where the heck is it?