Alive, maybe, but he looks exhausted, dirty, with scrapes on his cheeks. He’s in clothes I haven’t seen before: a thick plaid work shirt and jeans that are baggy but too short. I can’t read his face. He looks happy to see me but melancholic and afraid all at once, and I’m thinking I should stay on the defence, that something’s not right.

‘I am,’ he says, smiling.

I hear a male voice nearby say She’s up, but I can’t turn to place it.

‘I’m so glad you’re OK,’ I manage, and then I say it again and again and again. I want to tell him that I don’t know what I would have done if he hadn’t been.

‘Booker says you jumped off the ferry,’ he says, smiling a little.

‘A girl’s gotta do,’ I say, so much weaker than I intend. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s OK. I am too,’ he says quietly. ‘Mona, um … this is crazy. This is really crazy.’

‘What is this? What’s going on?’

‘She’s just – she’s not how you think she’s gonna be, OK?’

Someone else says my name and I hear the stomping of boots, and I feel someone kneel down beside me, and crane my neck, not even sure what I’m expecting, but it’s Booker. I blink at him, unbelieving. ‘Hey, kid,’ he says, looking a state; there are splotches of mud across his cheeks, a croaky, exhausted barb to his voice. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Yeah. I don’t know. Fine, I think.’

‘Think you can sit?’ he says, managing to prop a hand behind my back to haul me up. Then it’s said so quickly that I can’t be sure of it: ‘Keep your nerve, I’ll get us out of here.’

‘What?’ I say quietly, worried I’ve misheard him, but he doesn’t repeat himself.

‘Let’s get you up, for now.’ He does, and my insides light up with pain.

More footsteps from somewhere else – and they’re approaching. And seeing the two of them, side by side, there’s no way not to understand.

I was right. She’s been here all along.

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 36

Roxy Raines.

She’s standing there beside Ellis as if it’s the most usual thing in the world. Her blonde hair is peppered with grey and waterfalls around her shoulders down to nearly past her hips, thick roots disappearing into wispy, fog-like tendrils. She wears a sort of forest green hiker’s jacket and sturdy brown trousers. She still looks how she did in the photos: her eyes bright and charged with knowing.

She was alive this whole time. Not just alive; she’d never left.

What do you say? I pray for someone to speak first so I don’t have to.