Shielding my eyes, I gaze up Mandel Rise. Beyond the neat houses, right up there at the top is the forest. It ripples and shimmers greenly in the midsummer sun.

The heat and the noise press down on me, and worry twists like a worm in my belly. I look back over my shoulder; I should go back in there.

Then a siren shriek rips through the air as an ambulance swoops into the car park, blue lights whirling. The sound of terrible things – bones sticking out of broken limbs, families being torn apart, tiny hearts stopping. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to see.

Before I really know my feet are moving I’m over the road, running up Mandel Rise towards the forest.

GABRIEL’S OAK

I crash into the gate at the top of the hill feeling like my lungs are going to burst, but I can’t stop and think yet. I haul myself over and cannon between the picnic tables to the big oak tree that marks the proper start of Mandel Forest.

‘Gabriel’s Oak,’ I spit bitterly. That’s Mum and Dad’s stupid name for this tree; they named it after a character from Mum’s favourite book apparently. Panting, I bang my fist on the rough bark and stare up into the cool green of the canopy.

The sun’s heat is like a weight pressing down on me. My heart feels all fluttery and my mind whirs, all I can think of is that noise Mum made, that awful noise. My eyes start to prickle. No. I’m not going to cry.

I blink away the fog in my eyes and scramble up Gabriel’s Oak, squirrel-quick and breathless. Up and up and up, until the branches turn too bendy to take my weight, until when I turn to look at it the world seems small beneath me. I perch on a thick branch and rest my head on the trunk; my whole body aches and throbs as my heartbeat settles.

Through the leaves I glimpse the hospital tower. I wonder which window is Mum’s window but there are so many it’s impossible to tell. They remind me of those close-up pictures of flies’ eyes: all those hundreds of tiny compound eyes, each one seeing something the same but ever so slightly different. I imagine each window is an eye, all watching me. It gives me a little guilty shiver, that feeling of being watched. I should …

No. I turn away from the hospital. Leaning my back on the trunk, I draw up my knees and hug them to my chest. Something spikes the top of my leg. I reach into my shorts pocket and take out the deertooth I found yesterday. Yesterday feels so long ago.

I look at the tooth more carefully this time; it has a little hole in it that I didn’t even notice before. The hole’s full of mud. I hunt about for a thin twig and poke it until it’s all clear. I peep at the green leaves and blue sky through the hole. Close up, I can see minuscule markings scratched on to the tooth’s surface, a stripy pattern almost. Squinting, I count the tiny lines. There are twelve of them – twelve like me! I bite my lip. It’s my birthday and everything’s wrong. I bounce the tooth’s pointy tip on the fat part of my thumb.