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FIVE

GIRL

I can smell the lilies and the poppies. It’s summer, and I’m lying in a field of long grass that is tickling my legs, my shoulders and the back of my neck. A butterfly lands on my face and I can’t help but smile. It’s a red admiral; I remember seeing one once and thinking it was the most beautiful creature ever. I painted a picture of it in watercolours and stuck it to my bedroom wall. My art teacher tells me I’m talented and that I could make it as an artist one day. That is all I want, but I dare not tell my parents, not yet. I think Mr Preston will put in a good word for me at parents’ evening; he said he’d tell my parents how talented I am and that I should pursue art.

I swallow as I think of my friends, remembering our fallout. It was silly really. I wasn’t even in the school play, I just painted the backdrops, but I let them down. I shouldn’t have offered to help backstage. Firstly, I have zero organisational skills. Secondly, I’m clumsy. Thirdly, I’m easily distracted. I was meant to bring the giant toadstool onto centre stage for the final act, but I carried the vine-covered chair on instead. Then my bestie forgot her lines and the next person didn’t come on. Another kid came on in his place and delivered the last line, ruining the whole plot and the final act. Everyone awkwardly bowed to the crowd as a few random claps filled the auditorium.

It was all my fault.

Maybe I’m meant to be here alone right now. Maybe this is where I get to think about what I ruined and how, when I get home, I can make it up to them.

‘Hello, little caterpillar,’ I say, as I laugh at its many legs and hairy body. I don’t like the green ones or the ones without hair, but I like the furry ones.

It passes fast, too fast for a caterpillar. It’s getting away and I can’t reach it anymore.

‘Come back. I don’t want to be on my own.’

It’s lonely here, and it was lonely yesterday, too.

I smell the almost sheer, cupcake-patterned scarf wrapped around me, and there is a hint of perfume on it. I hug it closely. All I want is for someone to talk to.

I shiver.

Happy thoughts, happy thoughts: slobbering dog kisses, cat meows, chocolate pie, bubble baths, new make-up, the sound of my mum’s cheesy eighties pop music and my dad’s face when I tell him I’ll play chess with him.

That’s when I hear the clunking of the metal door above.

Please let it be anyone but him.

I scrunch my eyes even tighter, so I don’t have to look at my surroundings; so I don’t have to look at him. Come back lilies, come back butterfly and come back caterpillar. Please don’t leave me.

That’s when I feel his breath on the back of my neck.

On opening my eyes, I see the reality of my situation. I can no longer smell the flowers; all I can smell is the scent of my own gradual decay, and all I see is a damp, brick wall lit up by the shaft of light coming from the opening above.

‘Turn around without my permission and you die!’

I remain still. His dreams are now my dreams. They have to be if I am to survive.