‘Yeah, I do – I’m seventeen.

I have a couple of free periods, though.’

(And someone’s got to pay the bills.)

‘I work the outdoor minigolf.

See.’

He turns round, and a whole world of treasure washes up on the beach. Green paths split with more brown picket fences, giant boulders, barrels and open chests. And, in the middle, an elephant with its trunk in the air, fountaining water into a pond.

‘Usually I just work the desk all day,

giving out clubs and stuff.

But I thought we should have a game.

You know,

test the holes –

make sure they still work.’

I’ve not played minigolf in ages. The last time, I think, was with Cecelia when I was nine, and we only managed half the course because she kept climbing on all the obstacles and broke the nose off a dinosaur with her foot. I’m not sure I even remember how to play.

‘Are you allowed to do that?’

I shrug.

‘It’s ten on a weekday

and it’s bloody freezing.

Ain’t like there’s a queue.’

He holds up two balls to the camera, like fluorescent eggs.

‘Orange

or yellow, um …?’

And I realize

I don’t even know ghost girl’s name.

‘Alice,’ I say, and I open and close my mouth a few times, hunting for the words that won’t give me away. ‘I can’t play, you know.’

My heart is beating, beating.

‘Well, yeah,

you’re a camera.

But you can tell me what to do,

can’t you?’

He says it and it sounds so simple, but it’s not. All those years watching the other streamers Live for me, and I never once made a decision. I wasn’t there to Live my life – just to come along for the ride while they Lived theirs.

And when they lost theirs, too …

Now I’m not only watching. I’m playing. I have a ball.

‘Yellow,’ I say, perhaps a little too loud. ‘Please.’

I drop the orange ball first.

Hope she can’t see the bit of fake turf

some kid chewed up with a club last week

that I was supposed to stick back down.

I steady my club.

Bend my knees.

S W I N G

and clip the side

so the ball just sort of wanders off.

I must have played this stupid hole

a million times,

but the camera’s putting me off.

‘You’re not very good, are you?’

I can hear him sigh as he drops my yellow ball on to the plastic grass. It sits there like a sun waiting to rise.

‘Go on, then –

you do better,

ghost girl.’

I’m frozen, because how can I? How can I hit a ball into a hole when I’m a girl stuck somewhere in a bed? A ‘ghost girl’?