My thoughts panic and I remember a flash of a film Cecelia and I watched when we were too young, about a ghost who could walk into people and take over their bodies and feel their hearts beating inside their chest like they were Living again.

And perhaps this is the same, even though I’m far from dead. I can still cross over to the in-between.

‘Grip the club lower down.’

I’m almost down by the floor at this point,

but okay.

‘Pull it further back. More.’

You’d think she was out on an eighteen-holer

rather than a plastic jungle.

‘Okay,’ I say. And I can almost feel the club in my fingers – cold. Feel the sting in my knees from squatting. Feel the world vibrating under me like I’m standing on top of a speeding train.

‘Go.’

I swing.

Or maybe she swings.

Anyway,

the ball blasts

left – right – left – right

RiCoChEtS

off a fake rock,

r o l l s

round the side of the hole

and

bottoms into it.

He’s cheering and I’m cheering and the sea seems to roar along with us like an audience, with sunlight cameras flashing among the waves. And then an actual audience appears from round the front, waving money and gesturing at the gate stopping them from coming in.

Would you look at that?

Seems like ghost girl’s brought this place

back to life.

17

Alice

It’s movie night and I’m finding it difficult to concentrate.

Cecelia is sitting by the side of me, legs crossed over mine like we’re flowers joined by the same roots. Dad keeps popping in uninvited to laugh at things I’m not entirely sure are jokes, and Cecelia is tutting away like she’s a radiator that needs bleeding.

‘Are we supposed to find this hero guy attractive? Maybe he was fifty years ago or something, but he’s so old now it’s like watching a boiled cabbage take down a drug ring. Seriously.’

I wrinkle my nose. The man is running around with a gun, shooting at people. And I think we’re supposed to be laughing like Dad, but I can’t help but wonder who the people are that he’s stopping, and who they’re leaving behind now they’re dead.

It’s making me think about Wesley. I’ve been trying hard to push him to the back of my mind into a dusty drawer, where I can focus on the brightly polished parts of the world. But now I have Rowan. And he’s not just letting me watch – he’s letting me be part of the game.

If Wesley had done that, could I have stopped it? Would I have told him to slow down … or speed up?

The not-so-attractive-any-more hero in the film lifts up a woman and kisses her, and Cecelia pretends to gag.