She was crying in the dream, but it tapped into emotions so close to the surface that she began crying when she woke up too. Not a good way to start the day, as the song went. Reaching for a hanky from the box, she caught a look at the clock and saw that it was after nine thirty. She had been lying awake, tossing and turning, until close to four. Eventually she must have nodded off and had overslept. She didn’t set an alarm these days, because it was summer and the light tended to waken her around seven, but not when she’d only been asleep for three hours.

The dream had felt so real, both parts.

She dreamt of Mum a lot. Sometimes it was a comforting place to go, and other mornings it left her all the more bereft, because it had reminded her so vividly what it felt like to still have what she’d lost.

The second part, though, was new. She hadn’t had that dream before, and its impact was so profound because it wasn’t merely a dream. It was a memory. There were few details, because it had happened when she was just turned four. She only remembered feelings and impressions, not specifics. She had been somewhere with her mum and become distracted by something. She remembered holding a doll with a missing hand. It wasn’t hers; she had found it and been playing with it. Then she looked up and her mum wasn’t there. She couldn’t see her, couldn’t hear her voice. She remembered just standing there and crying: utterly bereft, her worst fear, a fear she hadn’t known she had until that moment, so completely realised.

It probably only lasted a few seconds, she didn’t know. Then her mum came back, all of a sudden. She comforted her, but she sounded a little firm too.

‘Why didn’t you come and look for me?’ she asked.

Jasmine remembered her relief being slightly soured by her disappointment at the gentle chastisement implicit in the question. She felt it was unfair. It hadn’t even occurred to her, because she didn’t know how, or even that it was an option.

‘Why didn’t you come and look for me?’

She might as well have asked why Jasmine didn’t rise up and fly.