It’s dark. It’s dark.

I blink and turn the brightness up on my laptop, but I know this darkness. It’s Wesley. Creeping out of the drawer in the back of my mind like a lost shadow. Wesley – who would have died somewhere on one of these roads.

Wesley, whose blood might still be on the tarmac, being run over again and again by cars and cars and cars driven by people who have no idea what’s under their wheels. People who weren’t there to see it.

Not like I was.

‘Can we stop?’

She sounds out of breath.

‘Sure.’

I move a snail off a red-brick wall and

sit down in its place.

‘You okay?’

I think about making something up again. But I’m losing track of all the lies.

I close my eyes. ‘No.’

I kick the wall behind me.

‘If I’d known you were afraid of cars,

I’d never have –’

‘I’m not afraid,’ I say.

I used to love them. I’d sit with my head out of the window like a dog as Dad drove me to our next adventure. I’d push him to go faster – faster – but then I saw what’s at the end of a speed record and –

Wrists. Wrists. Where are my wrists?

‘Alice?

It’s all right, you know.

I’m not a fan of …

some stuff, too.’

I hunt the skyline for the

bell tower in the distance.

I unstick my throat.

‘Show me something wonderful,’ I say. ‘Show me something Alive.’

‘Alive?’

I can see

seagulls in the sky.

The snail I moved.

A line of ants crawling over a spat-out sweet.

It’s all alive, but

it’s not particularly wonderful.

‘I dunno if this counts …’

I get off the wall and

walk back to the mouth of the alley.

I don’t want to go back towards the road, and I’m almost ready to scream at him to stop when he does anyway. And he takes the camera off his chest and tilts it so I can see the pavement.

And on the ground, in the middle of an alleyway, is a painting. Dusty and scuffed by shoes, but still there. Colour rolls round the corner of a building ahead, unfurling like a carpet at our feet. Pinks, blues, greens and yellows scratch into one another – droplets of what look like water just about still glistening in the sun overhead.

It’s like peering into the top of a snow globe, but I feel like the one who’s been shaken.

‘Is it one of yours?’

I swallow.

‘Yeah. Kind of.’

My breathing is going back to normal.

‘What is it?’

Seeing it now,

it looks like nothing.

Like a skidmark from something that

never should have happened.

‘It was a water lily.

Mam’s favourite.’

It’s not like his other drawings, that have burst from the cracks and brought themselves to life.