When I arrive back at the dorm Peyton pretends like I haven’t, a menacing quiet between us reserved only for unsaid things, not even glancing up from the idle taps of her phone.

I spend the night transcribing Henry’s interview and change into my sleep clothes in the bathroom.

Before I go to bed, I tell Peyton my theory about people and forests, not even as a peace offering, but something more sinister, maybe, forcing her to listen to my voice, forcing her to experience me.

The silence settles like grave dirt when I’m done. Cicadas trill sharply from outside. The nape of my neck prickles with sweat. I can’t help but look at her, the gentle rise and fall of her stomach, the pale soles of her feet, dusty with sand. But I don’t expect her to have any thoughts, so I turn over and face the wall, experimentally shut my eyes, but after a moment she says, ‘That’s really sad,’ then nothing else.

I turn, my pillow softly ruffling, and ask her what she means.

‘So hopeless.’

‘Man. At least I was polite about the unsolicited wisdom you subjected me to yesterday,’ I say, and shut my eyes again.

I wonder if she hasn’t quite understood what I mean about the forest, because it’s actually maybe the most hopeful thought I’ve ever had. Then we’re quiet again and I swear she’s moved on to something else, but another moment passes and she says, almost a whisper, ‘Maybe you’re a forest. I’m not.’

I roll back round to look at her staring at the ceiling, her silhouette in profile: the soft scoop of her nose, the petals of her lips. ‘What are you, then?’

Peyton spreads her hands high above her and moves them from each other, like she’s parting the sea. ‘A big open sky.’

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 20

MONDAY 7 JUNE, 4 a.m.

I’m becoming acquainted with the stars.

The moon is through the window, three-quarters wide, clear enough that I can make out the craters collapsing into each other, making up what I can’t help but see as a sort of anguished face.

I finally shake myself out of an interminable torture of half-wake, half-sleep, slip on my tennis shoes and go. I pass the ferry, docked in the harbour, massive and bobbing in the sluggish waves, rising and falling like someone asleep. I’m still thinking about Celeste. Not even the motion outmanoeuvres her this time; she’s clinging hard.

Like a leech.

There are no sisters. I even learned to hate the word, the hissing and the hard consonants prodding around, restrained in the very front pocket of your mouth. It’s an ugly word.