Quinn couldn’t even repeat the sentence back to her, his mind was so full of questions; was this what kissing was supposed to be like? What was her name? Could he see her again? Could he kiss her again now without pressing his offensively hard jeans against her?

Before he could answer any of these questions, his phone started to ring, then his other phone started ringing too. The girl glanced down, perplexed.

‘Sorry.’ Quinn took a step back, pulling both phones out of his pocket. His mother was calling on one, the taxi company on the other. It was one minute past midnight. Quinn turned his back on the girl, not wanting her to look down at his jeans. ‘I’m … I need to take this, but wait here, please. I’ll be one minute.’ He gave her an apologetic, pleading look and backed out of the side door into the courtyard beyond.

‘Yes,’ he said, answering the phone to his mother. ‘Mum I’m kind of bu—’

‘Quinn.’ She was crying, ‘I need you to come home right now.’

‘Mum I’ll be back in half an hour, I said—’

‘You need to come back now, Quinn, I think there’s someone in the garden, trying to get into the house.’ She sounded breathless, panicked.

Quinn sighed a slow, resigned sigh. He called back the cab; he’d be five minutes, just long enough to get the girl’s name and number. But when he went back inside to the corridor, she had gone.

1 February 2020

Minnie woke up in a panic. She couldn’t breathe. Something was suffocating her. She sat bolt upright, gulping for air, her arms flailing frantically. A grey ball of fur flew across her bed with a screeeeoooow sound. Since moving home last week, Lucky had taken to sleeping on her face. Whether he had separation anxiety, or he simply missed having a warm spot to sleep on at the top of the fridge, Minnie didn’t know, but it was turning into a life-threatening situation.

Looking around the room, Minnie had that momentary feeling of not knowing where she was. The ceiling was too close, the windows weren’t where they should be and there was the ominous sound of ticking, like a hundred bombs about to go off. Then she remembered she was at her parents’ house on a mattress on the floor in her old attic bedroom. There were no bombs, just the combined sound of a hundred clocks.

The small, eight-by-ten-foot space was packed with boxes and old suitcases. Her father’s workbench was set up in the middle of the room, covered with the remaining tools and magnifying lenses he hadn’t got around to moving. The wooden frame of her deconstructed bed leant against one wall, stacked away to make more room for boxes.