I freeze, just feet away. How did I get so close? They’re as faceless, nameless and unfamiliar as the police officers on the podium, the crowds on the train, the leaves on the trees. The bricks holding up the houses, the bushes guarding the driveways. We’ve never met. How could I have thought we ever would have?

‘Excuse me. I was looking for Katie.’ I hear myself, loud, alien, the name like a fist in my mouth, harsh on my tongue, all sharp angles and corners. ‘I thought … Do you know her? This is where she lives.’

Silence, rippling with the breeze between us, a breath from the past with nothing to say.

‘Come on, Chelle,’ one murmurs, pulling her friend along as they brush past me, rustling up the street, disappearing down a driveway.

A door closes. A light goes out. And I feel the world just fall away, like vertigo, every meticulous step charted out in my mind folding in on itself as the night tightens round me, velvet zip closing.

There’s nothing here for you, Marie. There never will be.

I push one foot forward, then another, then again. I think I hear someone call my name, somewhere beyond the night’s sharp edge; so faint, it’s gone.

121

Carly ~ Warchester ~ 1997

I wake with a start as the curtain squeaks along the rail, Doctor Twena framed in the gap. I don’t even remember my eyes closing, but my neck feels like my head is way too heavy for it and there’s a crust down my cheek from the corner of my mouth. The doctor smiles at me.

‘You’ve slept. And for a while, too,’ he says, pushing the curtain back. I squint at the figure next to him, short, blue jacket, peering at me like a mole. ‘This is Nurse Govern,’ he says, as they come into focus.

‘Hello, Carly,’ the woman says with half a smile. ‘How are you feeling?’

I sit up, rubbing my back and neck. I must have literally collapsed in this chair. It can’t have been for long though. The beeps are still beeping, Kayleigh’s still sleeping, and I’m sure I met this woman only this morning, even though it may as well have been a million years ago.

‘Nurse Govern works with social services,’ he says. ‘She’s just going to have a quick chat while I check your sister over. I expect the rest of your family will be here soon, won’t they?’

There’s his eyebrows, popping above his glasses. Suddenly it’s all scrapes and clatters as the nurse pulls a chair round to sit next to me. I start to panic. I can’t hear the beeps anymore and Kayleigh’s not moving.

‘Everything’s looking good, don’t worry,’ the doctor says as he leans over Kayleigh, pulling at a black loop of plastic around his neck.