I wouldn’t bother, Stella thinks. “The car?” is what she says out loud, but Diana hasn’t finished yet. Talk, talk, talk—who knew she was such a talker? She doesn’t seem to realise that she’s making no sense. The downpour hisses on the surface of the sea, muffling her voice, while the wind amplifies odd words and silences others.

“. . . while I’ve breath in my body . . .” Something about a “fragile child.” Something about “I’m dying.” There’s more, but Stella is losing patience. She’s hurt and ill, and she wants to go home.

A couple of hundred feet below, water collides with rock and explodes, and the thunder of it reverberates up, up, and up—through the strata of the cliff, through the soles of Stella’s feet, through every cell of her body—and there’s a fury inside her that answers to the force of it. She is sick to death of being clutched at and clung to, of being kept down and hemmed in and trapped. With a sudden resolve she jerks free, and for a couple of seconds she is standing alone, swaying with the wind.

“Get off me!” Somehow Diana has got hold of her wrists and twisted them behind her back; she cannot bear this. “Get off!”

Pebbles rattle into oblivion as Stella kicks the earth away from under her feet, and her pinioned body unfurls on a gust of wind. Diana has to let go, and Stella knows she won’t be caught again. She arches her back, spirals and somersaults, and her hair spreads into the wind like fire. In this free-falling darkness she becomes a blend of strange shapes and contortions: an upside-down and disintegrating miracle. A shooting star. A flying fish. A bird. None of the things that Cory Byrne appreciates in a girl.

She remembers her sister when they were both very small, sleepy on the sofa, taking her thumb out of her mouth to speak.

Stella? What would you wish for if you could have one wish?

Can’t I have three wishes?

No, ONE. Just one.

If only Freya could see her now.

Freya: January 2015

FREYA

January 2015

I’d set aside a whole day for packing, but I was done in a couple of hours. I sat on my bed and surveyed my emptied bedroom, with its bare furniture, grubby walls, and general air of inconsequence. Apart from practical things like clothes, I would be taking two boxes of books, one box of oddments—alarm clock, DVDs, bedside lamp, calendar, etcetera—and that was it. It was a good job I’d decided against hiring a van; this lot would fit easily in the boot, and along the back seat of the car.