I whimpered, fell forward. Soft. Warm. Coming around me, a hand in my hair, stroking. My fingers reaching and finding other fingers. Squeezing. They squeezed back. Holding on, so tight.

‘Okay.’ A crack, a cry. ‘God, Caitie. You’re okay. Okay. Jesus.’

Hours.

Days.

Voices, closer and then further away and then closer.

More nightmares. Brutal, violent, mean. In the dreams there was blood and vomit and broken glass everywhere, and it looked like glitter but it smelled like death and I was trapped in a broken car, dying, over and over again. Dying. Crushed. Buried. Bleeding.

I screamed, and the hands came back.

‘It’s all right, Cait. It’s okay. It’s just a dream.’

I reached, tried to hold on to anything I could but it was just blackness, just nothing.

Light. Dark. Nothing.

Slept.

The hands were gone when I woke up, replaced with a pillow, clean, dry, and a blanket. It was light, but not bright. Early.

Everything was still. Quiet.

I blinked, surprised my eyes still worked. Surprised I was still alive. My head felt like it had been pressed between concrete, my throat raw and swollen, but I was alive.

Lina was sitting on the floor, knees bent to her chest, wearing old, faded jeans and a stretched-out jumper, her hands tucked into the sleeves, hair twisted at the top of her head, falling out around her face, starting to curl. She was surrounded by postcards, carefully sorted into piles, holding a creased piece of paper, reading it. From the way her eyes moved it looked like she’d been reading it for hours, trying to make sense of it. I couldn’t see what it was, but I could guess.

Everything about her was wrong, hard. When she moved, it was stiff and harsh. The last time I’d seen her she’d been wearing a wedding dress, red lipstick. She’d looked like a princess, like a bride.

Now, she looked tired, exhausted and pale. I wondered if she was okay.

‘Hey,’ I said. My throat hurt. She jumped, surprised, looked at me for a long time like she wasn’t sure I was really there; looked away, vaguely disgusted. Hurt.

‘Hey,’ she said, to the floor. She put down the piece of paper and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Familiar shapes. A logo—it should have been red and white but it had printed black. A booking confirmation. I’d printed it out right after I’d done it, stuck it to my wall at home.

After the accident, I’d put it in the box, under the postcards, next to the envelope that held my passport. That was sitting on the floor too.

‘You never told me.’

‘I wanted to.’ It hurt to talk. ‘I was worried you’d be upset.’

She looked at me. ‘No, you weren’t.’

I tried to respond, but I couldn’t.

‘How are you feeling?’