Linda almost walked straight past Mick’s.

  Not because she didn’t recognise it—but because some part of her believed, stupidly, that if she didn’t look directly at it, it wouldn’t exist. That the day might still rearrange itself around her.

  The bar crouched against the weather, windows fogged from the inside, the sign above the door rattling softly in the wind like it had loosened its grip on purpose. Rain pooled at the kerb in shallow, shining hollows that reflected the street back at itself—bent, broken, unfinished.

  Music leaked through the wall.

  Not loud. Not clean.

  Tinny, flattened by brick and rain and time.

  Friday I’m in love.

  Linda stopped.

  The words hit her like a hand to the chest. Not the lyric itself—the memory attached to it. A kitchen years ago. Alice dancing badly in socks, Skye sitting on the floor with the rabbit in her lap, clapping off-beat and laughing like the world had never taught her restraint.

  Alice’s favourite.

  Linda pressed herself into the shadow of the shopfront opposite before she could think better of it.

  Then she saw her.

  Alice stood just outside the bar, half under the awning, shoulders hunched against the rain like she didn’t deserve shelter. A cigarette burned down between her fingers, forgotten, ash trembling at the edge. Her phone was in her other hand, the screen lit—not scrolling, not typing. Just open, draining battery and time.

  The song continued inside.

  Alice didn’t smile.

  Her eyeliner had run—not dramatically, just enough to suggest she hadn’t cared enough to fix it. Mascara clung stubbornly beneath her eyes like a bruise she’d chosen. Her jacket hung heavy on her frame, sleeves frayed, cuffs dark with rain. She looked thinner than Linda remembered. Or maybe just less held together.

  She took a drag that was too deep. Coughed it back without embarrassment. Punishing herself even for breathing.

  Linda’s chest caved inward.

  Oh, my girl.

  The thought came with no protection around it, raw and helpless. Linda’s hand flew to her mouth like she could physically hold the sound inside.

  Alice shifted her weight and ground the cigarette out too hard against the pavement, grinding until there was nothing left of it at all. Her jaw clenched as if she were daring the pain to speak up louder than she already felt.

  She pulled her phone closer to her face.

  The song changed—still the same track, but the chorus again, looping, relentless. Someone inside laughed, unaware. A door opened briefly, spilling warmth and beer-smell and voices that didn’t know how fragile the moment was.

  Alice flinched at the noise.

  Not outwardly. Internally. Like something had struck a place that never healed right.

  Linda watched her daughter fold in on herself, inch by inch, and knew—knew—that Alice was replaying it again. The walk that didn’t happen. The moment she chose something else. The ordinary decision that had split their lives in two.

  I should have walked her home.

  Linda didn’t need to hear the words. They lived in the way Alice stood like she was bracing for impact that never came.

  Linda’s fingers dug into her sleeve until they ached.

  “I don’t blame you.”

  The words rose instinctively, urgently, pressing against her throat.

  “I never blamed you. Not once. I swear to God.”

  She took a step forward without meaning to.

  Her heel scuffed the wet pavement.

  The sound was small.

  Alice’s head lifted.

  For half a second, the world narrowed to a thin, impossible thread. Linda felt her heart slam hard enough to bruise her ribs. She pressed herself back into the glass, breath caught, praying—not to be seen, not to be spared, just to not make it worse.

  Alice looked past her.

  Not searching. Not expecting.

  Just... empty.

  The look on her face wasn’t anger. Or even grief anymore.

  It was something worse.

  Endurance.

  Linda’s knees threatened to buckle.

  She’s still here, Linda thought, dizzy with it. She’s still here and I’m the one leaving.

  Alice wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing rain and mascara together like she didn’t care what it made her look like. She shoved the phone into her pocket without stopping the music. Let it keep bleeding out through the wall.

  Punishment, Linda realised.

  Friday I’m in love—over and over—like exposure therapy she never consented to. Like if she hurt herself with it enough times, it might finally stop hurting.

  Linda’s vision blurred.

  She wanted to run across the street. Grab Alice by the shoulders. Shake her if she had to.

  It wasn’t your fault.

  You were a child too.

  You didn’t fail her.

  You didn’t fail me.

  But her feet stayed rooted.

  Because if she crossed that distance, she wouldn’t be able to go where she was going next.

  And Skye was waiting.

  The thought came immediately after, slick and poisonous and convincing.

  Linda hated herself for it.

  Hated the way grief had narrowed her until there was only one shape left it would allow her to move toward. Hated that loving one child felt like abandoning the other, and that she didn’t know how to hold both anymore.

  I’m sorry, she thought, watching Alice light another cigarette with shaking hands. I’m so sorry I wasn’t brave enough to stay.

  The bar door opened again. Someone said Alice’s name—too loud, too casual.

  Alice flinched, then nodded once and went back inside without looking around. The door closed behind her. The music cut off abruptly, like a throat being cleared.

  Silence rushed in.

  Linda sagged against the glass, breath breaking free of her in a sound that wasn’t quite a sob. Her hands covered her face. Rain soaked her hair, her collar, her eyelashes. She didn’t wipe it away.

  Goodbye, she thought.

  Not to the bar.

  Not to the street.

  To the girl who should have been protected from all of this.

  She turned away before she could change her mind.

  Walked quickly. Didn’t look back.

  Every step felt like theft.

  Every step felt like proof.

  —————

  Rain took her again the moment she left the bar’s shadow.

  Not the soft spill from before—this was colder, more deliberate, needles needling through her coat as if the town itself were offended by movement. Linda walked fast at first, then slowed when she realised she didn’t know where she was going and didn’t care. Anywhere was better than standing still with that song still echoing in her chest, better than seeing Alice folded in on herself like something already half-broken.

  She didn’t look back.

  The street bled away from the bar into darkened shopfronts and closed shutters. Everything was familiar and wrong at once—places that would open again tomorrow, lights that would flick on, people who would step around what had happened as if it were weather. Her hands stayed in her pockets, keys biting into her palm hard enough to keep her upright.

  She didn’t notice she’d turned until the road narrowed.

  Combs Ford.

  The realisation hit her sideways, like missing a step on the stairs.

  Her body reacted before her mind did—shoulders tightening, breath catching sharp and shallow, the instinctive urge to turn back rising hot and fast. She hadn’t come this way in years. Not once. She’d learned every alternate route, every detour that spared her from seeing this stretch of road, from letting it exist under her feet again.

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  Her legs kept moving anyway.

  The trees closed in overhead, branches clawing at the dark, leaves plastered to the pavement like something pressed flat and left behind. Streetlights thinned out here, pools of weak yellow with long, blind stretches between them. The road dipped and lifted underfoot, patched badly, patched often—repairs layered over repairs like the town kept trying to forget what it was built around.

  Her chest hurt.

  Not a thought. A physical ache, deep and grinding, like something inside her was trying to turn back and couldn’t.

  She tasted rain and swallowed it down.

  Don’t, her body urged.

  Not this way.

  She passed the bend where the pavement narrowed. The place where the verge widened slightly, ugly and wrong, the camber off just enough to catch water and hold it. Even now, even in the dark, she knew it. Knew it the way you knew the shape of your own scar without looking.

  Then she saw the flowers.

  They were worse than she remembered.

  Not arranged. Not careful. Just there—flattened by weather, cellophane collapsed and clinging, paper soaked translucent so you could see the stems beneath like veins. Plastic wings half-buried in mud. A heart bleached pale by time. Someone had added fresh daffodils, too bright, still banded together like they hadn’t been meant to last long.

  Linda stopped dead.

  Her knees went first—not buckling, not dramatic. Just giving up their argument with gravity. She stepped off the pavement without deciding to, shoes sinking immediately into cold, sucking mud. The cold came up fast through the soles, sharp enough to sting.

  A car passed. Slower than necessary. Headlights washed over her and over the flowers and then slid away again, as if the driver had seen enough and wanted no part of it.

  The dark rushed back in.

  She lowered herself onto the verge with care she didn’t feel capable of—knees, then hands, then sitting crooked on the grass like someone who’d forgotten how bodies were supposed to work. Mud soaked through her jeans. She didn’t adjust.

  Her breath came out in short, white bursts. Her jaw clicked once before she forced it still.

  For a moment, she couldn’t speak at all.

  Then—too quietly to be brave, too automatically to be a choice—

  “Hi.”

  The word vanished into rain.

  Her hands hovered over the flowers, useless. Touching felt dangerous. Like contact might finish something that wasn’t done yet. She settled on the daffodils, fingertips brushing the damp band around their stems as if checking whether they were real.

  They were.

  That didn’t help.

  Her eyes squeezed shut and immediately Skye was there—not as memory, not softened. As sound.

  Mummy. I want to go home.

  The cry tore through her chest. Linda clapped a hand over her mouth, holding the sound in until it burned behind her eyes and down her throat. Her shoulders shook once, hard, and then locked.

  When she spoke again, the words came out broken, edged.

  “I don’t—”

  She stopped. Tried again.

  “I don’t know where home is.”

  The wind shoved through the hedges, rattling plastic and paper together in a soft, horrible whisper.

  Linda tipped her head back and stared at the sky, blank with cloud, empty of anything she could use.

  “God,” she said.

  The word came out wrong—too sharp, too raw, like she was throwing it rather than saying it. Her mouth twisted, something between a laugh and a choke catching in her throat.

  “I know,” she said quickly, as if pre-empting the silence. “I know. I’ve said it before. I keep saying it. I don’t even know if it means anything anymore.”

  Rain slid down her face and into her mouth. She didn’t wipe it away.

  “But I’m saying it anyway.”

  Her chest hitched.

  “Give her back.”

  No bargaining yet. No promises. Just the words, bare and almost childish.

  “Give her back.”

  The sound of the road answered. Water. Wind. Nothing else.

  She folded forward, forehead pressing into her knees, breath scraping its way in and out like it had edges now.

  “I’ll walk her home,” she said, and the confession landed hard enough to knock something loose inside her. “I should have walked her home.”

  The sentence stayed where it fell.

  Her shoulders caved inward. Mud dampened her hair. She didn’t pull away.

  A long stretch of time passed without shape. When she lifted her head again, her hands were numb, fingers stiff and aching.

  “Skye,” she said.

  The name wobbled, dangerous and thin.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought tomorrow was real.”

  Her throat closed. She swallowed against it, eyes burning.

  “I’m here,” she said again, but it sounded less like a promise now and more like a question she didn’t know how to answer.

  Her hand slid into her coat pocket without her deciding it. Found her watch. She tugged her sleeve back with clumsy fingers.

  The face glowed faintly.

  The minute hand had moved on.

  Something shifted in her chest—not hope. Not relief. A small, mean ache.

  “Alice,” she said aloud, and flinched at the sound of her own voice in the dark.

  The image came whether she wanted it or not—her daughter under that awning, shoulders hunched, cigarette ground down too hard, that song cutting her open again and again like punishment.

  “I don’t blame you,” Linda said into the rain. “I never did.”

  Her voice broke there. Not loudly. Just enough.

  “I should have told you.”

  The flowers blurred. Rain or tears—she couldn’t tell anymore.

  “I can’t leave you,” she said, and for one breath it felt true. Her body didn’t believe it.

  Then Skye’s voice rose again—thin, frightened, relentless.

  Linda rocked forward as if pulled by it, hands clawing into the grass.

  “Please,” she said, not to God, not to Skye—just to whatever was doing this to her. “Please stop.”

  She lay down carefully beside the flowers, turning her face toward them, cheek pressed into cold, wet ground like proximity might count for something. The earth smelled of rot and petrol and crushed leaves. Her coat soaked through fast.

  She drew her hands to her chest, curling around nothing.

  “I love you,” she said, barely audible. “I don’t know where to put it.”

  Her eyes closed.

  Not a decision.

  A pause.

  As if, for one moment, she could stop holding herself together long enough to feel what she was about to break.

  Down the road, a streetlight flickered—dimmed, steadied—uncertain.

  The rain kept falling.

  Time kept moving.

  And Linda lay there, on the road she had avoided for years, finally unable to look away.

  ———-

  She woke to cold.

  Not the clean cold of air on skin—but the kind that had already sunk in, that clung to bone and didn’t hurry to leave. The grass beneath her was slick, pressed flat where her weight had been, rain threading through her coat seams like it had learned the route.

  For a moment, Linda didn’t move.

  She lay on her side, cheek against damp earth, listening to the road breathe. Tyres in the distance. A lorry too fast for the hour. Somewhere, a fox screamed and then stopped, as if it had realised no one was listening.

  A torch beam cut across the verge.

  “Evening.”

  The voice was calm. Too calm for the way it made her stomach clench.

  Linda opened her eyes and rolled carefully onto her back. The beam moved with her, never blinding, just present. She could see boots now. Black. Practical. Mud already worked into the tread.

  Jack stood a few feet away, torch angled down, rain-dark coat open at the collar. His radio hissed softly at his shoulder and then fell quiet again.

  He didn’t rush toward her.

  Didn’t kneel.

  Didn’t say her name yet.

  That told her everything.

  “Hey,” she said, testing her voice. It came out hoarse, but steady enough to pass. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to cause a fuss.”

  Jack exhaled through his nose. Not relief. Assessment.

  “You’re not in trouble,” he said. Then, after a beat, “You hurt?”

  Linda shook her head. The world tilted slightly and then settled. “Just cold.”

  Jack nodded once, accepting the answer without believing it. He flicked the torch off and let the darkness return to something closer to normal.

  A patrol car sat pulled in at an angle behind him, amber lights muted but alive, washing the trees in slow, sick pulses.

  “Couple of calls came in,” he said. “People get jumpy around here. Still remember... everything.”

  She swallowed.

  “I didn’t realise I was that visible.”

  “You weren’t,” Jack said. “Until you were.”

  That was as close as he came to reprimand.

  He stepped closer now, careful not to crowd her, and held out a gloved hand. Not insistently. Just there.

  Linda hesitated, then took it.

  Her fingers felt clumsy in his grip. He steadied her without comment, let go the moment she was upright.

  She brushed grass from her sleeve like that mattered.

  “Sorry,” she said again. Too quickly.

  Jack watched her for a second longer than necessary.

  “Linda,” he said gently. “How long have you been out here?”

  She opened her mouth.

  Closed it.

  “...A bit.”

  His jaw tightened—not visibly, but enough that she caught it.

  “Alright,” he said. “We’re going to do this properly.”

  She stiffened.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Honestly. I just needed some air.”

  Jack tilted his head slightly. The look wasn’t sceptical. It was practiced.

  “You don’t need to convince me,” he said. “You need to convince yourself.”

  She gave a small, humourless laugh. “You always say that.”

  “I say it when it’s true.”

  Rain ticked against his coat. Somewhere behind them, a streetlight flickered—once, twice—then steadied.

  Jack glanced at it, then back at her.

  “You eaten today?” he asked.

  Linda frowned. “That’s a strange question.”

  “It’s a normal one.”

  “...Yes,” she said. Then, after a fraction of a second too long, “I think so.”

  Jack didn’t call it out.

  He shifted his weight, changing stance—not threatening, but grounded. A man who knew how easily people tipped.

  “I’m on shift,” he said. “I can give you a lift home.”

  She shook her head immediately. Too immediately.

  “No. I want to walk.”

  Jack waited.

  “I walk better when I’m thinking,” she added, softer. “You know that.”

  He did know that. It showed in the way his eyes flicked away for a second.

  “The weather’s turning,” he said instead. “Forecast didn’t mention half of this.”

  “I like the rain.”

  That earned her a look. Not disapproval. Recognition.

  “Linda,” Jack said, voice lowering, “Kate’s been calling me all afternoon.”

  Her chest tightened despite herself.

  “And Simon,” he added. “More than once.”

  She stared at the road. The verge. Anywhere but his face.

  “I figured,” she said. “I wasn’t answering.”

  “No,” Jack said. “You weren’t.”

  A pause settled between them, heavy with everything not said.

  “You want me to ring them?” he asked.

  She swallowed. “I will.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  Jack’s gaze sharpened. “Linda.”

  She forced herself to meet his eyes. “I promise.”

  There it was. The word, offered cleanly, almost convincingly.

  Jack held her gaze. Not long. Just long enough.

  “Alright,” he said finally. “I’m going to take that at face value.”

  Relief and dread collided in her chest.

  “But,” he continued, “I need you to hear something first.”

  She waited.

  “If you disappear tonight,” Jack said carefully, “I will come looking. And I won’t be patient about it.”

  Something in his tone shifted then—not anger, not threat. Fear, tightly leashed.

  “For my son,” he added quietly. “If nothing else.”

  That landed.

  She looked away before he could see what it did to her face.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. It sounded reasonable. Almost true.

  Jack nodded, but his hand had already gone to his radio, thumb resting there without pressing.

  Another flicker ran through the streetlights—stronger this time. A brief blackout, then a surge back to life.

  One of the bulbs down the road shattered with a sharp pop.

  Linda flinched.

  Jack turned fully now, scanning the line of lamps, the houses beyond. Curtains twitched. A door opened a crack.

  “What’s that?” Linda asked, her voice thin.

  “Power surge,” Jack said automatically.

  But his eyes stayed on the verge.

  “Where are the flowers?” Linda asked suddenly.

  He looked at her. “What?”

  “The flowers,” she said. Her breath came faster now. “They were right here. People leave them. For Skye. For Lexi.”

  Jack followed her gaze.

  The verge was bare.

  Not trampled. Not scattered.

  Empty.

  “That’s...” He frowned. “I don’t know.”

  Her stomach dropped.

  “They were here earlier,” she said. “They don’t just—”

  Another flicker. Stronger. A ripple, like something running the circuit of the town.

  A woman across the street stepped onto her doorstep, robe pulled tight, staring up at the lights.

  “Jack,” Linda whispered. “Something’s wrong.”

  He opened his mouth—

  “Mom!”

  A child’s voice cut through the air.

  They both turned.

  A boy stood on the pavement two houses down, clinging to his mother’s sleeve, eyes wide and bright with something that wasn’t fear.

  “Mom, look! Did you see it?”

  “See what?” the woman snapped, her own voice shaking despite the irritation she tried to coat it with.

  “The butterfly,” the boy said urgently. “The light one. It’s pink and blue and purple—”

  “There is nothing there,” she said, too fast. “Enough.”

  “But it took the light when it flew past,” he insisted. “It went—whoosh—and then the lamp went out!”

  “That’s it,” she said sharply. “Another word and you’re grounded for a week.”

  The boy’s face crumpled. He let himself be dragged back inside, looking over his shoulder once more before the door slammed.

  The lights flickered again.

  Closer now.

  Linda felt it then—a pressure at her side. Not touch. Proximity. Like standing next to someone you didn’t hear approach.

  Her breath hitched.

  Jack reacted to her reaction.

  “Alright,” he said, louder now, into his radio. “Control, I’m seeing irregular electrical activity on Combs Ford—no, not just the lamps. Something else.”

  Static answered.

  The pressure intensified.

  A voice cut through it.

  Male.

  Close.

  Urgent.

  Linda froze.

  Not sound — not exactly.

  The word landed inside her head fully formed, sharp and unmistakable, like a command she’d missed hearing until it was already obeying something in her body.

  Don’t.

  She gasped and staggered back, breath ripping out of her chest.

  Jack reacted instantly — not to a voice, but to her.

  “Linda?”

  She pressed a hand to her temple, shaking her head hard as if she could dislodge it.

  The pressure returned, tighter now, coiled and urgent.

  Wait.

  Linda clutched her head. “Jack, I—I think I’m—”

  “She’ll be scared,” the voice said, overlapping, faster now. “Confused. Do not do this.”

  Jack stepped closer to Linda without touching her. “Linda, look at me.”

  “She won’t be there anymore," the voice said. ”She’s here, you don’t need to be with her when she’s already here with you."

  The lights exploded overhead.

  Glass rained down.

  Linda screamed—not in terror, but in overload—and bolted.

  “Linda!” Jack shouted.

  She ran.

  Not toward the lights.

  Not toward the voice.

  Toward home.

  Behind her, Jack swore and took off after her, radio barking as he ran.

  “Control, I have a vulnerable adult fleeing the scene—possible hallucination, possible—”

  The lights continued to fail in sequence as Linda ran beneath them, darkness chasing her heels.

  The voice shouted once more, raw now, breaking its own discipline.

  “Don’t go!”

  She didn’t stop.

  She didn’t look back.

  She ran until the town blurred, until the only thing left was breath and rain and the certainty that if she slowed down, she would fall apart.

  Behind her, Jack slowed.

  Not because he wanted to.

  Because the lights went out entirely.

  And in the sudden, absolute dark, he knew—with a cold certainty that had nothing to do with training—

  That letting her walk away might have been the worst decision of his career.

  And that this time, the rules might not be enough.