I don’t tell him I’m here right away. I just watch him chisel away at it with what I think is an old kitchen spatula covered in purple paint.

I swear

I am never,

ever

buying a stick of gum again.

‘Do you use that spatula to paint?’

He jumps.

Ghost girl scares the bejesus out of me.

I cough over my surprise.

‘Used to, yeah.

I used other stuff, too.

Wooden spoons,

bottle tops,

anything lying around, really.’

He stops scraping and I can see little flecks of dried paint on his skin now.

‘Your house must be a swirl of colour.’

I dust my hands together.

‘A mess, you mean?’

‘No, I mean that it must feel like you’re living in a painting, with everything being a brush.’

A sound starts to buzz like a swarm of angry wasps.

‘Sorry, phone call.’

The caller ID says INTERNATIONAL.

Dad. Again.

I decline the call.

The buzzing stops. ‘Who was that?’

I get out the sandpaper

and start scratching at the gum stains.

‘You ask a lot of questions.

What about you?

Tell me something.’

I clench my fists. ‘What kind of thing?’

I shrug, pushing against the metal.

‘I dunno, anything.

Distract me.’

I look round my room and pick over my words carefully.

‘I have a goldfish. His name is Manta. He’s a Black Moor.’

‘Okay … a fish.

That’s something, I guess.

What else?’

Manta swims round in a panic.

‘I … I like water. The sea. The ocean, actually. I watch a lot of documentaries.’

He puts his sandpaper and spatula in his bucket of loosened gum.

‘The sea we can do.’

He stands and walks to the front of the minigolf course. The sky is the same colour as old tarmac, and see-saws as he steps.

‘Hey, Sue –

all right if I take my break?

I’ve gotta be back at school at eleven, but …’

A woman hidden in the hut at the front is reading a newspaper. She holds a cigarette between her lips and looks at her watch.

‘No point now, love. Might as well call it a day.’

Rowan puts the bucket on the desk and shifts from side to side. The woman looks up.

‘Don’t worry – I’m not going to dock you. Off you trot.’

Not gonna dock me?

Usually she counts my pee breaks

and now I get to leave an hour early.

Paid.

Rowan almost runs, away from the hut and the minigolf course, down the bank towards the sea – his shoes scattering pebbles and sinking up and down roller-coaster mounds as he heads to the water’s edge.

The brown-grey waves stretch towards the sky.

The wind is wild.

Kicking up a storm in my ears like rock music.

‘So there’s the sea, Alice.

What are we gonna do?’

The sound of the waves is crashing into the microphone and I can hear a roaring – like the water has turned animal.