It wasn’t night-dark—nothing with edges or corners you could map.

  A thick, absolute black with no walls, no floor, no sky.

  Linda’s breath didn’t fog. The sound of it didn’t echo. It didn’t land anywhere.

  She couldn’t tell if she was standing until she tried to move and felt the drag—like wading through something that had no business behaving like water.

  “Skye?”

  The name scraped out raw.

  Nothing answered.

  Then—

  “Mummy.”

  It hit her body before it hit her ears.

  A child crying. Not polite. Not held in. Broken, breath snagging, the kind that shook small ribs until they hurt.

  Linda lurched toward it and found direction only because panic made one.

  “I’m here,” she said, too fast. “I’m here.”

  The dark thinned—not into light, just into contrast.

  Skye was there.

  School jumper. Backpack strap crooked on one shoulder. Hair brushed badly. Shoes scuffed.

  Exactly as she’d left her.

  Skye’s face shone wet, mouth open in that unguarded shape children made when they cried without trying to be quiet.

  “Mummy, I want to go home.”

  Linda tried to close the distance.

  Her legs moved, but the space didn’t. Each step felt like pushing against something that refused to be crossed.

  “I can see you,” she said, voice cracking. “Skye, I can see you.”

  Skye shook her head hard enough to make tears fling.

  “You’re not,” she said. “I can’t see you.”

  Linda reached out.

  Nothing changed.

  The distance stayed where it was, calm and cruel.

  Skye’s hands clenched in her sleeves like she was trying to keep herself together.

  “Why aren’t you helping me?” she cried.

  Linda dropped to her knees without deciding to.

  Her hands hit her thighs. Her own skin. She grabbed at herself, grounding, desperate, as if she could anchor her body into the place long enough to cross it.

  “I am,” she said. “I’m—”

  Skye screamed.

  “MUMMY!”

  The sound tore through Linda’s chest.

  She shoved forward again and felt resistance—not a wall, not a barrier.

  Pressure. Like pushing against the idea of moving rather than the act itself.

  Her arms burned with the effort. Her wrists burned with it, too, heat flaring where the skin remembered old hurt.

  She looked down without wanting to.

  Thin pale lines. Older. Some newer, still angry.

  Her hands shook.

  She looked up again.

  Skye was closer now.

  Or maybe Linda was.

  Skye’s face twisted with fear and something worse—confusion.

  The look a child gives when the person who is meant to fix things isn’t fixing them.

  “I’m scared,” Skye said, voice small as breath. “It’s too dark.”

  “I know,” Linda said. “I know. I’m trying.”

  Skye reached out.

  “Mummy.”

  Her hand went straight through Linda’s.

  The dark surged—not like movement, like a swallow.

  Skye’s voice echoed once more—

  “I want to go home.”

  Linda screamed, and the sound didn’t go anywhere.

  ?

  One Day Ago—The Morning Before Skye Came Home

  She woke with a sound in her throat that wasn’t a word.

  Her body jerked upright, lungs dragging air like she’d been held under. For a second she didn’t know where she was—only that something terrible had happened and hadn’t finished happening yet.

  Grey morning pressed weakly at the curtains.

  The house was quiet in the way a room got quiet after shouting stopped.

  Linda lay still, listening, as if listening could change what came next.

  Nothing answered.

  She sat up. The rabbit was under her arm, crushed wrong, its stitched nose damp where her hand had clenched in sleep. She didn’t put it right.

  Her gaze went, without permission, to the cupboard.

  The door wasn’t fully closed.

  It never was.

  She didn’t go to it. She didn’t touch it. She didn’t look long enough for her body to begin.

  She pulled her sleeves down until the fabric sat tight at her wrists and stayed there.

  Then—

  knocking.

  Real. From downstairs.

  Linda didn’t move at first.

  The knocking came again, the same measured rhythm, as if whoever stood there had decided urgency would only make things worse.

  She pushed herself up from the bed slowly, bare feet finding the cold patch of floor beside it. Her head felt thick, like sleep hadn’t ended so much as loosened its grip. The rabbit stayed crushed in the sheets where she’d left it, one ear folded wrong.

  On the landing, the house held its breath with her. The air tasted of old wax, damp fabric, something faintly sour she’d stopped noticing until it settled on her tongue.

  She didn’t go straight to the door. She paused at the top of the stairs, hand on the banister, listening.

  Nothing moved.

  The knock came again.

  Linda went to the small window beside the front door and kept her face back from the glass.

  A woman stood on the step with a clipboard tucked against her chest, coat buttoned neatly, hair smoothed as if she’d had time to choose it.

  Dr Danielle Shannon looked up and offered a small, practiced smile. Not warmth. Recognition. The kind you gave when you were already counting how long you had.

  Linda’s hand found the chain. Her fingers shook just enough to make it rattle.

  She unhooked it. Turned the key. Opened the door a fraction and held herself in the gap.

  “Morning,” Danielle said, voice softened on impact. “I hope I’m not too early.”

  “It’s... fine,” Linda said, because that was the shape of the expected answer.

  Danielle’s eyes flicked quick—swollen eyes, stretched jumper, the way Linda held herself like she was bracing for a shove. She shifted the clipboard, pen already waiting between her fingers.

  “I’m glad you answered,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave it.”

  “May I come in?”

  Linda stepped back. The movement cost her more than it should have.

  Danielle crossed the threshold carefully, as if the house itself might be fragile. She shut the door behind her and paused with her hand still on the handle, listening.

  No kettle. No footsteps upstairs. No voice calling from another room.

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  Her eyes moved once over the hall: coats piled where they didn’t belong, a half-burned candle stub on the side table, a photograph fading at the edges.

  “How have you been since we last spoke?” Danielle asked gently, like beginning a ritual.

  Linda made a sound in her throat that might have been a laugh if it hadn’t died halfway.

  “Same,” she said.

  Danielle nodded, unsurprised. “Shall we sit?”

  In the living room, Danielle chose the chair nearest the door without making a point of it. Linda took the sofa and left space between them that felt occupied by something neither of them could name.

  Danielle uncapped her pen. “Sleeping?”

  Linda stared at the carpet, at a darker mark where something had spilled and never come out.

  “Not really.”

  “And the dreams?”

  Linda’s hands tightened together in her lap. The sleeves tugged against her wrists.

  “Yes,” she said, sharper than she meant.

  Danielle didn’t react. She had a way of not reacting that could feel like kindness or distance, depending on the day.

  “Do you want to tell me about last night?”

  “You always ask that.”

  “Because it matters.”

  Linda looked away. The room was too quiet. Every sound belonged to her—the swallow, the breath, the small shift of her knee against the sofa.

  “It was the same,” she said. “She was there. And I couldn’t—” The sentence snapped. She shook her head once, sharp, like no could be an action. “It doesn’t change.”

  “It can,” Danielle said, because she’d said it before. “If it’s happening more often. If it’s escalating.”

  Linda’s fingers tightened until the knuckles went pale.

  “It is.”

  Danielle’s eyes sharpened a fraction.

  “It’s every night,” Linda said. The words came out like they’d been waiting. “Sometimes I wake up and it’s still there. Like it hasn’t let go. And it’s louder. Like she’s trying to get through something and I’m on the wrong side of it.”

  Danielle wrote neatly, quickly, then looked up again as if the act of recording could contain it.

  “I’m not asking you to stop missing her,” she said. “I’m asking you to notice what your body is doing to you.”

  Linda’s thumb scraped her knuckle until it stung.

  “Can we do the breathing again?” Danielle asked.

  Linda didn’t look at her. “You always do that.”

  “Because it works.”

  “For who,” Linda said quietly, then sighed. “Fine.”

  Danielle guided. Linda followed because resisting took more effort than letting it happen. The air moved in and out—too tight at first, then a fraction less. It didn’t fix anything. It just stopped her chest from feeling like it might split.

  “Thank you,” Danielle said, as if something had been achieved. “That’s you taking care of yourself.”

  Linda glanced up. “Is it.”

  “Small things matter.”

  Outside, a car passed on wet road, tyres hissing, like it belonged to another life entirely.

  Danielle checked her notes. “How’s Alice?”

  The question landed hard.

  Linda’s shoulders tightened. “What about her.”

  “Have you spoken since last time?”

  Linda laughed once—short, ugly. “No.”

  “I’ve tried,” she said quickly, hating how it sounded like she was asking for credit. “She doesn’t answer. Or she does and it’s like talking to a wall that’s learned to hate you.”

  Danielle nodded, attentive. “What do you think she believes?”

  Linda didn’t answer immediately. When she did, her voice had changed.

  “She thinks I blame her,” she said. “For Skye. For not walking her home.”

  Danielle waited.

  “She thinks I look at her and see a mistake,” Linda continued, words tightening. “Like I think if she’d done one thing differently, we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  Her breath shook once. She forced it steady.

  “I wish I could make her understand,” she said. “I wish. Because the truth is I don’t blame her at all. I blame myself. I was the adult. I was the mother. I let the world take my eyes off my child and I will never forgive myself for that.”

  Danielle softened. “That sounds like a lot of guilt.”

  “That’s because it is,” Linda said.

  “And Simon?”

  Linda’s eyes flicked toward the hallway, toward the knowledge of another house, another kitchen.

  “He comes by,” she said. “Sometimes. He lives with his girlfriend and his stepdaughter now. Or half-lives there. We don’t talk. We negotiate.”

  “That kind of instability can deepen your sense of—”

  “Loneliness,” Linda said flatly. “Yes. I know the word.”

  Danielle accepted the interruption with a nod. “I’m sorry.”

  Linda’s gaze dropped to the coffee table. The magazine headline about parole reform. The phone she hadn’t touched.

  “He’s up for parole,” Linda said.

  Danielle paused. “Jamie.”

  “Yes.”

  Danielle inhaled slowly. “And you said Alice told you something?”

  “A phone call,” Linda said. “Before. Something he said. Like he knew.”

  Danielle tilted her head. “Have you reported that?”

  “We tried.” The word was sharp. “The police listened. Then his solicitor spoke. Then suddenly it was about grief. Memory distortion. How trauma makes narratives unreliable.”

  Danielle frowned. “They dismissed it?”

  “They reframed it,” Linda said. “Very politely. Jamie’s lawyer suggested Alice and I were misremembering because we needed a villain. Because that’s apparently what mothers and sisters do when they lose children.”

  Her voice didn’t rise. That was worse.

  Danielle shook her head. “That must have been incredibly invalidating.”

  “It felt like being told my child didn’t know what she heard,” Linda said. “And that I was hysterical for believing her.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Danielle said gently.

  Linda looked at her. “I know you like that one.”

  Danielle stiffened, then smoothed it away. “It’s about reality, you couldn’t do anything, you told me you chose to save a child, you made that choice with the information you were given, you didn’t have the foresight that your daughter was going to be killed as a result.”

  “My reality,” Linda said, “is that I’ve held dying strangers’ hands and told their families they did everything they could. And when it was my own child, I wasn’t there.”

  Danielle opened her mouth.

  Linda didn’t let her in.

  “I can’t go back to the ward,” she said. “I can’t stand there and lie to someone else’s mother.”

  Danielle tried again. “Work could give you structure.”

  “Structure,” Linda repeated. “Is that what you think this is.”

  Danielle glanced at the clock. “You’ve said you feel untethered.”

  Danielle shifted the clipboard. “Linda... when you last talked about wanting to be with her—”

  “A plan, you’re wondering if I have a plan, right?,” Linda said softly.

  Danielle recalibrated. “Do you feel like you might act on those thoughts?”

  Linda didn’t hesitate. “I feel like she’s alone.”

  Danielle blinked.

  “I feel like she’s calling and no one’s answering,” Linda continued. “And every instinct I have tells me you don’t leave your child in the dark.”

  “I want you safe,” Danielle said.

  Linda nodded.

  “And Skye wouldn’t want you to—”

  Linda’s eyes lifted sharply.

  “—to disappear,” Danielle finished. “She’d want you here.”

  Linda’s face went very still.

  Inside her chest, the words rearranged themselves.

  She’d want you.

  Linda nodded again, pretending to acknowledge her.

  Danielle smiled, relief softening her posture. “Good. Hold onto that.”

  She talked about routines. Small wins. Reaching out.

  Linda listened like someone memorising instructions she didn’t intend to follow.

  When Danielle stood to leave, Linda stood too.

  “Same time next week?” Danielle asked.

  Linda nodded.

  Danielle stepped back into the grey morning and carried the smell of wax and grief away with her.

  Linda closed the door and turned the lock.

  The click wasn’t dramatic.

  She didn’t pause.

  She moved.

  Upstairs, daylight had already found its way in.

  It lay thin and grey along the landing, caught in the worn patches of carpet and the dull shine of the banister where hands had polished it over years. Linda didn’t reach for the light switch. The house didn’t need help seeing her.

  She moved anyway.

  The house knew the route. Her feet followed it without asking, step by careful step, as if sound itself might interfere — not with discovery, but with resolve.

  Skye’s door stood open.

  Linda didn’t go to the bed. She didn’t touch the rabbit. She didn’t look at the places memory liked to wait with its traps already set.

  She crossed to the cupboard.

  The door opened with the familiar resistance of old hinges. Inside, coats hung unused, fabric sagging under the weight of years that no longer mattered. To one side, where it wouldn’t be seen unless you were looking for it, was what she had kept.

  She didn’t take it out.

  She didn’t need to.

  Knowing it was there was enough.

  Her body reacted anyway — a tightening in the chest, a shallow pull of breath through her nose. The knowledge lived in her hands even when they stayed at her sides. She knew how. She had always known how.

  That was the problem.

  Her throat closed until she had to swallow twice to keep from making sound.

  This isn’t panic, she told herself.

  And it wasn’t. Panic scattered thought. Panic ran.

  This was quieter. Heavier. A decision already made, simply waiting for the right shape to take.

  Skye was calling.

  Not with words. With absence. With that hollow certainty that something precious had been left alone in the dark.

  A mother didn’t leave that unanswered.

  Linda rested her forehead briefly against the cupboard door, the cool wood grounding her just enough to stay upright.

  “Not yet,” she whispered.

  The words weren’t mercy. They were logistics.

  She saw it before it happened.

  Not memory — projection.

  Simon, standing in the kitchen doorway of someone else’s house, sleeves rolled up because he always did that when he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He’d register it in stages: confusion first, then the stillness that meant something had gone wrong in a way he couldn’t fix. He would say her name once, carefully, as if it might be a mistake that could be undone if spoken correctly.

  Linda.

  Then there would be Alice.

  At the top of the stairs, already shaking her head before she even saw properly. Already knowing.

  “No,” she’d say. “No—Mom—”

  The word would tear out of her, half fury, half terror, because she’d understand instantly what she was looking at. Because she always did.

  Linda squeezed her eyes shut, as if she could stop the image by refusing to witness it.

  “I know,” she whispered. “I know.”

  Her chest burned. Tears came without ceremony, soaking into the collar of her jumper. She breathed in and couldn’t get enough air; breathed out and couldn’t empty it.

  The pull inside her split cleanly in two.

  One side dragged her toward the dark, toward the child who shouldn’t be alone.

  The other dug in hard, insisting on time.

  Not forever.

  Just time.

  “Tonight,” Linda said.

  The word didn’t feel like permission.

  It felt like a plan.

  Tonight meant she could put things in order. Tonight meant she could say goodbye without calling it goodbye. Tonight meant she could leave something behind that wasn’t only wreckage.

  She straightened.

  Turned away from the cupboard.

  And didn’t look back.

  ?

  Downstairs, the living room felt unchanged in the way only familiar rooms could be — furniture in the same places, light falling wrong across the table, the quiet holding its breath without knowing why.

  Linda sat.

  Pulled a sheet of paper from the drawer. Then another.

  She stared at the first for a long time before picking up the pen.

  Her hand shook at first. She waited until it steadied.

  Simon,

  She stopped. Crossed it out. Wrote it again.

  Simon,

  I don’t know how to say this without it sounding like blame, and I don’t want it to be that. I loved you. I still do. I know you tried. I know you’re trying now. I don’t hate you for surviving. I hate the world for making survival look like forgetting.

  I’m sorry if it ever felt like I was angry at you for moving forward. I was angry because I couldn’t. Because every step away from her feels like a betrayal I don’t know how to live with.

  Please don’t let Alice think this is her fault. Please. She will try to carry it if you let her. Don’t let her.

  Take care of her in the ways I couldn’t anymore.

  I’m sorry I couldn’t stay.

  — L

  She folded the paper carefully. Slid it into an envelope. Wrote his name on the front in a hand that barely wavered.

  Then the second page.

  She didn’t write the name straight away.

  She stared at the blank space until her chest hurt.

  Alice,

  There are a thousand things I want to say to you and none of them fit on a page. You were never invisible to me. Not once. I saw you. I see you. If I could choose one thing to leave behind, it would be the certainty that you were loved every single day of your life.

  I know you’ll try to understand this. I know you’ll look for reasons. Please don’t make yourself one of them.

  Be angry if you need to. Be everything. Just don’t disappear inside it.

  You are not responsible for what I couldn’t survive.

  I love you more than I know how to explain.

  — Mom

  The pen slipped from her fingers and clattered softly against the table.

  Linda sat very still for a moment, hands flat on the wood, breathing through her nose until the room stopped tilting.

  She slid the letter into its envelope.

  Wrote Alice on the front.

  ?

  In the hallway, she pulled on her coat with clumsy hands, fingers missing sleeves the first time. She tucked the envelopes into the inside pocket, pressing them flat against her chest like they might move if she didn’t.

  The mirror caught her briefly — pale face, red eyes, someone older than she remembered being.

  She didn’t stop.

  Looking invited hesitation.

  She picked up her keys from the dish by the door. They rattled softly in her palm.

  Downstairs, the house waited.

  Not expectant.

  Just present.

  The familiar creak of the step halfway down. The smell of old wax and damp fabric. The photograph on the side table she didn’t straighten this time.

  Simon wouldn’t be far.

  Alice would be somewhere she could reach if she tried hard enough.

  This mattered.

  Not notes. Not drawers. Faces. Voices. Proof that she had seen them. That she had chosen them as far as she could.

  Linda opened the front door.

  Cold air rushed in, sharp enough to sting her eyes. Morning hadn’t fully decided what it was yet — grey, unsettled, capable of becoming anything.

  She stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind her.

  The lock clicked.

  The sound didn’t feel final.

  It felt temporary.