The only movement out here is directly behind and above Jess’s head, one storey up. Up there, even though the indistinct limbs of the climber blend with the night, what appendages extend from the floral nightgown allow the frail figure to move sideways, as deftly as a crab and as meticulously as a probing spider. Crouched over, the head low, the thin dark form scrambles across the narrow roof that cowls a bay window, before crawling up a wall. The patchy hair is as pale as the widened eyes. Teeth are bared within the face that peers down at its carer for just a moment before the figure soundlessly slips inside the master bedroom.

Upon the mighty trees at the end of the garden, the furthest extent of Jess’s torchlight plays but is too feeble to reveal much of anything. And yet the intrusion of electric light provokes something from inside the trees. Jess can clearly hear the sound of distant water swishing about a large form, either rising or sinking.

She retreats inside the vicarage. Closes the patio doors, douses her torch and withdraws from the glass, her breathing so hard she’s near asthmatic with fear.

As if any sound will make her shatter, she tiptoes through the vicarage, up the stairs, across the landing and slips inside the master room.

Where Flo sleeps peacefully. Impossibly, her client is here. A glance at the handset becomes an appalled scrutiny that reveals the red dot, signifying Flo, has indeed returned to the bedroom.

On top of the covers and still dressed in Charlotte Gardner’s clothes from the 1970s, Izzy is nestled into Flo’s back, smiling within her own deep sleep.

Unable to blink, Jess stares aghast at her client and daughter. She slips her fingers over her scarred mouth to stifle her sobs.

Curiosity overriding shock, she gathers herself sufficiently to creep to the open window and to look down at the drop to the patio below. She closes her eyes and the window.

25

The rain-speckled bus window overlooks the grey smear that is the world. Sat in the window seat, Izzy’s eyes flick across a landscape that increasingly urbanises and darkens, casting its shadows and symbols and abrupt noises at her glum face. With her shoulder she holds her sleep-deprived mother upright. Mum’s dozed off, her long face weary from defeat. A faint whistling passes through Jess’s nose.

A flicker of white on waste ground outside, between two buildings, catches Izzy’s eye and makes her alert. When the next space between two soot-shaded facades appears, Izzy eagerly peers into the gully and the waste ground beyond. When the wheezing bus slows in traffic, for just a moment, she glimpses a distant figure dressed in white. Izzy smiles.