When Aunty May came over last Christmas I got upset because she kept going on about how “Freya is very young for her age.” Do you remember me telling you at the time? She got obsessed about it, and it was irritating—but she was right, you know. I am too young for my age; it’s like I stopped growing when Stella died. I’m a teenager frozen in time.

Since I came away to Byrne Hall—all of one day ago—and got this aerial view, I’ve become convinced that my life has to change—soon, now, completely. I don’t know how it’s going to happen—I’ve yet to work out the finer details—but maybe—maybe!—I’ll chuck in my job and have a crazy love affair and become a poet—and if I do some, or all, of these things then it’s possible the world won’t fall apart, and I won’t fall apart, and Dad won’t fall apart.

I’d been writing quickly, without much conscious thought, but my hand began to ache so I stopped and reread the whole thing. I scribbled out and guilt and replaced the words Making up for what happened with Honouring Stella. Those were the only changes I made before folding the letter into rough quarters and putting it in my pocket.

That big, bare room was chilly in the half-light and I couldn’t stop shivering, even after I’d got into bed.

8

I heard the clunk of a car door in my sleep and it wove itself into my dream.

There was nothing to see, just the sound of two voices arguing—but I can still hear them now if I close my eyes. The first voice was panicked; it kept yelling, Come away! Quick! Come on! The second, all coy and fluttery, said, I’ll leave just as soon as he’s kissed me on the mouth. One kiss—just one—and then I promise I’ll go. Back and forth they squabbled, without making any headway, until the first one slammed her car door as a prelude to driving off—only the engine noise never materialised, and the dream began to fade.

Go, whispered the first voice.

You’re only jealous, retorted the second voice, as I slid toward wakefulness. You’re jealous because I’m alive and you’re not.

“I am alive,” I said. In the bleary logic of my dream, the knowledge that I was alive had some connection with Cory Byrne, and it felt like joy—if joy is a molten heat that makes you sweat in your sleep and stick to your bedsheets.

I woke properly to the sound of men’s voices below my windows. I lay still with my eyes closed, listening to their chatter, the rumble of laughter, and the crunch of shoes on gravel.

I got up before I was ready, all sleepy and crumpled, and hobbled to the window. The car—a dusty and dented Ford Fiesta—was unmistakably Tom’s, and there was Tom himself with his back to me, zipping up a holdall in the boot. Cory Byrne was the one who had laughed—he did it again as I watched—and the person he was talking to was my father.