With shaking hands she pins the sheet to the line to let it dry. After all, she’s looking at the paper in the strange red glow of the safelight, not daylight – perhaps when she takes the photograph upstairs she’ll see something else entirely.

She struggles to keep her breath steady. Sweat beads her forehead and crawls along her collarbone as she dips another sheet into the fluid. She counts, stares hard at the edges blackening into formation, then gasps when another word appears.

YOU.

In the haze of the safelight she stares at the letters on the print, so startled and sickened by the absolute dearth of reasons why an image of Gaia upside down mid-cartwheel should be obscured entirely by these three large letters. What does it mean, ‘you’?

She glances up at the stairs leading to the house, listening out for Coco’s cries. Nothing. One more. She’ll do one more print and then she’ll take them all up to the light to get a better view.

LEAVE.

She pins the print to the line, no longer wanting to hold it in her hands. The word shouts from the page. When she turns on the main overhead light, bleaching the room in a cold white glare, there’s a second where she’s convinced the words will be gone. But there they are, now a chilling triptych swaying on the line:

YOU MUST LEAVE

It is morning. Aurelia sits up in bed and looks over at the crib. Coco is lying flat, her head turned to one side, her lips puckered in deep sleep. Aurelia has barely slept. After the discovery of the weird words on her photograph last night she rushed upstairs to Derry – who mercifully still had Coco on her lap – and showed her the print. Derry admired it, said she saw no words, no letters at all … And when Aurelia looked again she saw that the print was merely an image.

‘But … there were words on it,’ she stammered, holding the print to the light, and began to explain what she’d seen and why she was so flustered.

‘What happened?’ Maren asked, returning with the shopping, and Aurelia thrust the print at her, to see if she would confirm what Derry has said, that the words had disappeared.

‘I see only some trees and Gaia dancing,’ she said. Aurelia sank into a chair, equal parts relieved and baffled. Most of all, she felt tearful.

The fuss stirred Coco. Derry stood up and rocked her, which silenced Coco, at least for a few moments. Maren sat next to Aurelia and fixed her with a stern look.