The shadows around us seemed unfixed, curiously alive.
‘It’s funny,’ said Jill. ‘I always had you down as someone who’d work it out.’
‘Work what out?’
Her face grew sly with knowledge. ‘What you were meant To Do.’
I stared at her dully. ‘Do?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Do.’ And she raised her eyebrows again.
‘Um, I don’t know what you mean. I get angry on command. I smash stuff. I break stuff. I’m very good at it, actually. What else is there?’
In answer, she strode to the wall of my room, and beckoned me over with a long, surprisingly elegant finger.
‘Look,’ she said, tapping on the rough wood.
And, because her voice had a certain firmness I didn’t want to mess with, I did as she asked, and peered through the rough timber slats.
Beyond us, far away, at the very edge of the horizon, just past the end of the forest, was a small grey cloud. As we watched, it grew bigger and darker, and a quick white arrow darted out from its underbelly.
‘A little lightning baby,’ Jill said. ‘They’re so cute when they’re that age.’
‘Huh?’
My thoughts moved like treacle dripping off a spoon. It felt like a million years since I’d been flinging small boys around a stuffy lounge, and the last few hours had been very strange indeed, and now I just wanted to lie down and close my eyes. Why did people have to keep pestering me? Why couldn’t I just be left alone?
‘What’s out there, duck?’ said Jill softly.
Reluctantly, I forced my eyes open, and looked out at the world.
‘It looks like a storm.’
She pulled away and fixed me with those leached eyes again. ‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it? The question is: whose storm is it?’
For a tiny beat, her face seemed to fill with a disturbing wisdom, and I became extremely cold.
‘Jill,’ I said, frightened, ‘are you … are you definitely not …’
She shook her head. ‘Who I am is not important. It’s also fairly complex and difficult to explain. And we’re running out of time. This is about you. You – and your destiny.’
She pushed her glasses up her nose. They fell back down again immediately.
‘Now, you’ve got a choice,’ she said. ‘You either get on the bus and come with us or you stay here, and do what needs to be done. And to do that, girl, you’re going to have to explore and release that anger of yours properly. You’ve got to show us what you’ve got, and you’ve got to do it with love mixed in. Because that’s the answer to everything, isn’t it? Do what you’re best at, even if it frightens you, and do it with love. What’s the flip side of anger, duckie? What can you turn it into?’
I heard the distant rumble of thunder. Shadowy memories ran through me, like birds flying across the surface of my bones. ‘And sometimes I think a bit of that storm’s been stuck inside you ever since.’
The dusk and the cloud had darkened the sky and the light inside my room, turning Jill’s face almost liquid, hard to distinguish. She could have been anyone. She could have been an ancient monument who had been around since the beginning of time. Her face continued to ripple and shift, and her eyes were black pools of secrets.
‘You’ve got a storm inside you, haven’t you, Frances? Isn’t it time you let it out?’
‘But …’ my throat ached with frustration, ‘I let it out every day.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she said softly. ‘That’s just a pantomime. It’s not real. It’s just a few smashed plates. That’s not proper anger, is it? And it’s not for the people that need it either.’
‘I don’t know how to make it any different.’
‘Yes, you do,’ she said.
And just like that, I did. Dizzy with the surprise of it, I regarded her for a second, and my eyes grew wide with understanding.
‘Oh,’ I said wonderingly. ‘Oh.’
Life needs to live. Then the dead can be set free.
Scanlon, I realised. And the others. They were why I was still here. I had to do something for them. And for me too.
And that soft voice I’d heard became a bit louder in my head. ‘Sometimes I wish you’d find something more important to get angry about.’
Jill blinked at me, slowly. And then she reached out her hand and laid it for a moment on my face, cupping my cheek as if it was something precious, and worth holding.
‘Between you and me,’ she whispered, ‘the tricky ones are always the best ones. In my experience. Which is …’ she produced the briefest of smiles, ‘considerable.’
She cocked her head to the side as if she heard someone calling her name. And then, just as mysteriously as she had arrived, she was gone, leaving an odd smell in the air, like burnt toast, and one single white feather dancing in her wake.
I RAN OUT of my room and pounded the winding, narrow corridors.
‘Scanlon?’ I shouted. ‘Scanlon?’
In answer, I heard a faint hiccup.
Confused by the gloom, disorientated by the growing rumble of thunder, I stumbled on the ghost train tracks and fell through a doorway, which led to …
… the little girl’s room.
When she saw me, her little face twisted in fear, and she flung herself on the mattress.
‘Oh, don’t do that,’ I said helplessly. ‘I … I’m sorry I haven’t been very, um, friendly.’
She raised herself up from the tousled blankets and regarded me for a moment. ‘Ma. Ma,’ she said.
There was a sharp pain just behind my breastplate.
She held out
