The First Ethereal: The Ethereal World Series, #1

CHAPTER 1

Lilly woke with a start, her heart hammering. As if stumbling out of thick fog, it took her mind a few seconds to realise that she was at home in her bed. She reached out her hand and found the wall against which her single bed was pressed in the tiny bedsit flat. Had someone called her name?

‘Lil,’ whispered a familiar voice from the darkness, his voice hoarse.

Lilly’s heart slowed. She pushed herself up and groped for the bedside light, the chill air giving her instant goosebumps.

She squinted, her eyes struggling to adjust to the brightness and then her mind to comprehend what she was seeing. After a moment she said, ‘Jack. What the hell? Who are you meant to be this time?’

He was dressed as a 1970s rock star, complete with skinny black jeans, cowboy boots and a tight shirt. His usually short-cropped fair hair had been replaced with a thick mop of unruly dark waves that stretched past his shoulders. To complete the look, he was holding a microphone stand and posing as if the photographer from NME was standing behind her. She laughed in spite of herself.

‘Steven Tyler?’ she asked while trying and failing to suppress a yawn.

Jack rolled his eyes. ‘Not even close. Ian Gillan. Smoke on the Water. Get it?’

It took her a minute to make the connection. ‘Oh no, really? Again?’

‘Afraid so,’ he said with a grimace and then instantly transformed back to his usual uniform of white T-shirt and jeans before slumping down into the flat’s single armchair. ‘I was just trying to cheer you up in advance.’

She smiled at him, grateful for the gesture but already bone weary at the thought of another night on a camp bed in the community centre. ‘How long do you think?’

‘About fifteen minutes before the sirens go off, give or take. I gatecrashed the emergency services meeting and they’re mobilising the pumps and boats again. If you ask me, this one will be worse than the last few – the river looks like it’s bloody possessed.’

Lilly sighed and scanned the tiny basement flat, which was one square room with a chunk taken out of the far corner to squeeze in a bathroom. It had been her haven once. Even at sixteen and desperate to find anywhere to live that wasn’t her parents’ farm, she’d been impressed by the crisp whitewashed exterior of the old Georgian house, the window boxes stuffed full of cheerful pink geraniums and the modern Scandi interior that convinced her to trade square footage for style. Three years had passed without incident, but in the last twelve months she’d been evacuated seven times as the river surged to levels no one had thought possible. So far, her flat had only been flooded once, but something told her that it was only a matter of time before the damage would necessitate more than a few weeks of drying time and a new carpet.

Reluctantly, Lilly flung off the thick duvet and padded over to the suitcase that served as her wardrobe. ‘Did you let them see you?’ she asked Jack as he filled the kettle and spooned coffee into her travel mug.

‘Nah,’ Jack said. ‘Everyone was so stressed out I thought it best to keep a low profile. I will though when we go to the community centre, unless of course you want to get a reputation for talking to yourself,’ he added with a smile.

Lilly had been able to see Jack for as long as she could remember. They grew up together, although he always looked to be a few years older than her. When Lilly had a scooter, Jack had a bike. When she had a bike with stabilisers, Jack had one he could do wheelies on. The older she got, the older Jack appeared. The perpetual big brother.

Her parents had tolerated what they dismissed as her ‘imaginary friend’ when she was very small, but their patience had quickly run out as it did with most things. There was no place for magic or mystery at the farm, even for a child. Arguing the point proved futile, so she had just stopped talking about him to avoid the consequences, but he remained as real and as corporeal to her as any living person. She knew that if he allowed it, other people could see him too – they just couldn’t remember him for longer than a few seconds.

Lilly was well aware that Jack wasn’t human in the sense that other people were. When she was little, she once asked him if he was a ghost. He’d just laughed and said he was her friend. She only ever broached the subject once after that and he said there were rules about how much he was allowed to tell her. Having always hated arguments, she decided it was as good an explanation as any. He was her only friend, after all, so she wasn’t going to push her luck.

Lilly reluctantly pulled off the T-shirt she was wearing once she’d found a long-sleeved top, sweater and jeans to put on, then pulled her long auburn hair into a bun.

‘You’ve lost more weight, Lil,’ Jack said flatly. Lilly could almost feel his eyes on her bare back, inspecting her. She shrugged and ignored the comment. She wasn’t in the mood for that particular debate tonight. Thankfully, he let it drop.

By the time the flood siren sounded twenty minutes later, Lilly had everything she considered essential stuffed into her backpack. Jack had spent the time putting anything that they couldn’t take with them hopefully out of reach of any floodwater. Lilly’s drawing board he’d balanced on top of the shower unit. Her printer, lamps and kettle had been given refuge on top of the kitchen cabinets.

Picking up her art portfolio and her rucksack she scanned the room. The routine was horribly familiar now.

‘Ready?’ Jack asked, relieving her of the rucksack and then handing her the travel mug of coffee.

Lilly nodded sadly.

‘You’ve shielded yourself? There’s going to be some seriously high-octane emotions out there tonight,’ he said, putting his hand on her shoulder and studying her face.

It had been Jack who had taught her how to control her ‘gift’. As gifts went, she thought it was probably about the worst sort you could get. A kind of super-empathy that meant she felt the emotions of any living soul within about a ten-mile radius. Worse, she seemed to be tuned to the lower vibrations of pain and misery because she could never recall feeling anyone’s joy or elation. It wasn’t just an awful gift – it was a defective one to boot.

Had it not been for Jack teaching her how to protect herself and switch off all but the emotions that were hers, she guessed she’d be living in a cave, half mad – or worse.

‘Yep,’ she said, ‘hatches all well and truly battened down.’ He looked worried so she tried to smile reassuringly, but the truth was that she felt sick to her stomach at the thought of having to spend a night crammed into a hall with half of the town. Shielding herself was one thing, but short of making herself invisible like Jack, she still had to cope with being in a crowd of people for hours on end. Sucking in a deep breath, she grabbed her coat and keys and they headed out of the door.

CHAPTER 2

The wail of the siren sounded indecently loud in the darkness as they stepped out of the house. Street lights had been routinely turned off after midnight since the power shortages had begun and while they were usually turned back on during emergencies, whoever had responsibility for flicking the switch had clearly not yet received the memo.

Lilly handed Jack her travel cup so that she could find the torch she kept in her coat pocket. As she did, a strong gust of wind caught the side of her portfolio case and almost dragged her off her feet. Instinctively, Jack threw his free arm around her.

‘Thanks,’ she said, feeling suddenly close to tears.

‘Always said a strong gust of wind could have you over,’ Jack said, only half joking. ‘Come on, you’ll feel better once we’re back in the warm. If we hurry, we might get a spot at the back again.’

Perched on the Welsh-English border, Pont Nefoedd was a hilltop market town built high above the banks of the river Wye. Three steep hills connected the Old Road at the base of the town, where Lilly lived, to the New Road at the top which was bounded by the start of the forested mountains. The town, which could trace its history back to Roman times, had never flooded before. It was a fact the newsreaders liked to trot out when reporting on the unprecedented nature of the country-wide flooding. The implication was that if even Pont Nefoedd could flood, then nowhere was really safe.

Lilly and Jack were halfway up the hill, the wind and rain blessedly at their backs and the glow of the community centre just a few hundred yards ahead of them, when Lilly felt her vision blur. ‘No,’ she muttered, but it was too late. As her heart slammed into high gear, she felt her breath hitch high in her chest as her back slicked with sweat and her legs turned to jelly.

When she opened her eyes, she was leaning against a wall. Jack was holding her arms and staring at her in the glow from the now working street lights, his brow knitted together. At least she was still on her feet, she thought.

‘Did you have another one?’ he asked, scanning her face, although for what, Lilly wasn’t sure.

The question confused her for a second until, like fragments of a torn photograph, the pieces of her memory rearranged themselves. Her stomach reacted first, lurching as if she was about to vomit. Swallowing hard, she took a deep breath as the picture in her mind settled into coherence.

Realising she’d not answered his question she said, ‘I saw someone,’ then faltered as her eyes swam with tears. ‘I saw someone I loved very much being,’ the last word was a choked whisper, ‘beheaded.’

Jack pulled her into a tight hug and planted a kiss on top of her head. She held on tightly, anchoring herself as if without him she really would blow away on the next gust of wind. She breathed in the scent of him, wild honeysuckle and summer meadows, and tried to forget the smell of blood and sawdust that had so recently overwhelmed her.

‘It was so real, Jack,’ she said quietly. ‘I felt the rough wood under my hand as I climbed the steps up to the execution platform, the weakness in my knees, the nausea. I could even smell the sawdust, the sweat of the guard behind me and the blood. There was so much blood.’ When she lifted her eyes to meet his she saw that he was on the verge of tears too.

‘Drink this,’ Jack said, pressing her travel mug into her hand.

After fumbling with the lid, she took a swig of her coffee. It was still close to scalding and she winced, but the pain helped to ground her. She hadn’t wanted to kick off another argument, especially now she was facing who knew how long in the evacuation centre again, but neither could she go on like this. The nightmares were bad enough, but now it no longer seemed to matter whether she was asleep or awake for these horrors to attack her. Only the day before she’d had to abandon her shopping basket in the market after a particularly brutal episode had sparked a full panic attack that her bent double and gasping for breath.

‘I need to know, Jack,’ she said, holding his gaze. ‘Please, I can’t go on being hijacked like this. I feel like I’m losing my mind.’

Jack looked away quickly, but Lilly reached up with her free hand and gently turned his face to look at her. ‘Please.’

She held his gaze and after a moment he nodded slowly. ‘But you have to be sure,’ he said.

‘I am sure,’ Lilly replied, hoping that he could read the absolute conviction in her eyes, but not her fear.

‘Okay, but not here eh? Let’s get in the warm first and then I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘I promise.’

‘Okay,’ Lilly said and pushed herself away from the wall. Her legs felt weak, but there was no way she’d admit as much to Jack. After months of nagging and pleading he was actually going to tell her what was happening to her and she wanted nothing to get in the way.

CHAPTER 3

By the time they reached the community centre there were already a dozen families settling themselves onto the camp beds that would be their temporary home for the night, but possibly longer. Lilly remembered the first time they’d been evacuated. The children had been wide-eyed with the adventure of it all, racing around excitedly despite the best efforts of their anxious-looking parents to contain them. There was no such excitement in the air tonight, just the howls of over-tired toddlers and the loud sobs of one little boy who had forgotten his favourite teddy in the rush. Even the pets seemed fed up with the repeat performance. A Siamese cat yowled loudly from its carrier, while an old chocolate Labrador turned in circles trying to get comfortable on a makeshift bed of thin blankets and what looked to be its owner’s padded coat.

‘Lilly isn’t it?’ asked a stocky man wearing a bright orange tabard with ‘volunteer’ stamped back and front. ‘You’ll have to remind me of your last name,’ he said, smiling, although Lilly could see the tiredness on his face.

‘Jones,’ Lilly said quietly, ‘And this is my friend Jack Smith.’

He gave Jack a nod of acknowledgement and Lilly watched as he added her name to the list on his clipboard. He frowned, his pen hovering over the paper as if he had lost his train of thought, then said quickly, ‘Great. Well Lilly, you know the routine by now unfortunately. Grab yourself a spot. There’s tea and coffee in the kitchen next door so just help yourself.’

As the volunteer strode away, Lilly turned to Jack. ‘That never gets old, you know.’

‘What, people forgetting me the instant they’ve met me?’ Jack said.

‘Yep. You’re like a wizard,’ she said, yawning. ‘I wish I could do it.’

After finding two beds together in the corner, they dumped Lilly’s things and went into the kitchen. Lilly longed to sleep. What she had come to think of as her waking nightmares always left her feeling physically and emotionally drained, but now that Jack had at last promised to explain things to her, she had to stay awake.

After helping themselves to coffee they were drawn to the small crowd of people standing around the large wall-mounted TV watching the news. The banner at the bottom of the screen read, ‘live from Venice’. The reporter, a polished thirty-something in a suspiciously new-looking rain jacket, was standing in a boat next to an elderly man wrapped in a foil blanket. As the camera pulled back, the old man heaved back a sob before being comforted by a younger woman, herself in tears.

‘So, there you have it,’ said the reporter, his voice wobbling slightly. Making a visible effort to contain himself he said, ‘The Adriatic has finally claimed this unique, magnificent city. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, beloved by honeymooners and tourists the world over, but now lost to us all under the waves. Feeling that loss, of course, most acutely, are the people who called this beautiful city their home. Here on this boat and the handful of others in this final flotilla of evacuees are the last of the Venetians.’

The last sentence comes out in a hurry as if he too is holding back a tide that might any second overtake him. The camera panned to take in a half-dozen small boats before the shot switched to images of the inundated and now forcibly abandoned city.

‘Not just us being washed out of our homes then,’ said an elderly man standing next to them. ‘Poor buggers,’ he added, shaking his head before, with shoulders drooped, he left the room.

Lilly lingered, hoping that the next item might be news of the UK-wide flooding, but instead it was a report on the nationwide state of emergency in Australia prompted by record-breaking bush fires. Images of charred koalas, sheep and kangaroos filled the screen before being replaced by aerial shots of log-jammed highways and still smouldering towns that look like something out of Mad Max.

The newsreader said, ‘As the scale of this latest disaster escalates, the focus is now on evacuation. Both New Zealand and Indonesia have said that they will review the Australian government’s request for emergency refugee status for its citizens over the coming months, but that no change in their initial decisions to refuse the application would be forthcoming in the short term. Humanitarian aid in the form of medical supplies, food and water would, though, continue.’

Lilly became aware of Jack’s hand on her arm, then realised that her breathing was coming in short hiccupping gulps. As the newsreader began reading out the daily death toll from the sepsis crisis, Jack gently steered her out of the kitchen. ‘How’s that shielding holding up?’ he asked quietly.

Lilly forced herself to take a deep breath, centring herself and checking that everything she was currently feeling belonged to her and nobody else. ‘All mine,’ she said breathily, ‘the misery, despair and anger is one hundred percent coming from me,’ looking up at Jack and seeing what she considered to be similar emotions mirrored in his own face.

‘How one species can quite so spectacularly screw up an entire planet in so short a space of time is kind of beyond me,’ he said, almost spitting out the words.

Lilly didn’t have the words to reply. They had talked about this so many times but always seemed to circle back to the same point of hopelessness. Lilly felt hot tears fill her eyes and a split second later, Jack pulled her into a hug.

‘At least the troubles haven’t spread here yet,’ Jack said, referring to the frequent riots that had been blighting most of the big towns and cities for months. If he’d intended to point out a bright side, Lilly thought, he’d majorly missed the mark.

‘Come on, why don’t you get an hour’s sleep at least,’ Jack said, tucking an escaped strand of her hair back behind Lilly’s ear. ’And no, I’m not trying to get out of telling you about the dream stuff – I promise. But you look done in.’

Lilly nodded her agreement and led the way back into the main hall. Although her back still ached at the memory of the last night she’d had to spend on the emergency camp beds, she decided that she was probably tired enough to sleep on the floor if she had to. She sat on the bed, pulled off her boots and laid down. The last thing she saw before sleep overwhelmed her was Jack pulling a blanket over her shoulders.

When she woke a few hours later, the first feeble rays of watery winter sun were filtering in through the gaps in the mismatched curtains. Her eyes felt puffy and with a sinking heart she recalled snatches of the latest dream.

‘Hello, sleepyhead,’ Jack said quietly from where he sat on the bed next to hers, ‘that was another rough one. The nuns, right?’

Levering herself up, she nodded, caught off balance for a second that Jack knew exactly what she’d just been dreaming about. This time she had been sitting in the street, fat cold cobblestones beneath her and crippled with pain all over her body. She had been freezing and soaked to the skin. Two figures had hurried towards her, lanterns swinging in the darkness. They had started to lift her with strong but gentle hands, their kind words as comforting as their touch, but when her hood slipped back and they had seen her disfigured face caught in the swinging lamplight, they called her a whore and let her fall back onto the cobblestones. The physical pain was blinding but had been eclipsed by her sense of heart shattering despair.

Before she could ask him, he said, ‘I don’t see all of the dreams, just the ones where I was …’ he hesitated slightly then added, ‘close by.’

Swinging her thin legs off the bed so that she could sit facing him, Lilly held her head in her hands and rubbed at her temples, trying to kick her brain into gear and process what Jack had just said to her while still struggling to banish the image of the pinched, pious-faced nuns from her mind.

Failing, she said, ‘I don’t understand. How did you know?’

Jack hesitated for a beat but then said, ‘What you’re going through, it’s called the Remembering.’ He paused as if waiting for some kind of recognition. She racked her brain, but she’d never even heard the term before. Pressing on, he said, ‘So you see, Lil, they’re not just nightmares or panic attacks …’ He paused again and Lilly felt a mixture of irritation and apprehension rising in her chest. If he’s hoping to avoid having to spell it out, she thought, then he’s bang out of luck.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked, lifting her head so that she could look at him. She probably knew Jack’s face better than her own. She studied it, trying to figure out the expression in his gold-flecked green eyes.

‘What I mean is that what you’re seeing, feeling, they’re …’ He hesitated and Lilly cursed herself for not being sharp enough to fill in the blanks for him. ‘They’re memories,’ he said at last; the last two words were almost a whisper directed at the floor. She let the silence stretch, unsure about what to say. He raised his head, lifting his eyes hesitantly to meet hers.

The realisation dawned slowly. ‘Memories?’ she asked. Her mind wrestling with the idea of what he might be trying to tell her. Jack nodded slowly and Lilly took a few deep, deliberate breaths, conscious that her heartbeat had broken into a trot and may at any point bolt into an all-out gallop. Willing her voice to stay level, she added, ‘As in past lives?’

‘Yes, Lil, you’re remembering your past lives,’ he said, sounding relieved to finally say the words aloud.

Lilly exhaled as if she’d been winded. She scanned the hall, feeling suddenly trapped by the thirty or so people dotted around the cavernous space. Some were still sleeping, others were huddled over their phones and talking quietly in small groups at the front of the hall. Quelling the compulsion to bolt from the room, after a few fumbled starts she said in a whisper, ‘So, just to be clear, you’re telling me that all these horrific, terrible, murderous dreams that make the worst horror films feel like a trip to Disneyland are real?’ She shivered, but when Jack reached out to take her hands she snatched them away. He had known this. For the past nine months, he’d known this, but he hadn’t told her.

‘Well, yes and no. Yes, they happened, but no, they’re not real. They can’t hurt you – they belong to a life that’s long past,’ Jack said in an urgent whisper. Taking her face tentatively in his hands he said, ‘Please don’t be mad at me, Lil. I couldn’t tell you until you were ready. There are rules, you know that.’

Lilly felt her eyes brim with tears and she pulled away, turning her head away from him and wiping her face on her sleeve. Then, all at once, as if she was watching a hundred horror films on fast forward, a barrage of terrible scenes flashed before her eyes at lightning speed. The sensation made her giddy and she held her head in her hands to steady it.

Jack sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘That’s just the data coming in – it’s nothing to worry about. It’s normal,’ he said. He was doing his best to sound calm, but she could hear the tension in his voice, feel it in his fingers as he gently rubbed her back with hands that were trembling.

Lilly had no idea why she was so upset. It wasn’t like she didn’t already believe in past lives. When your best friend is invisible to everyone but you, reincarnation is not much of a stretch. As she considered it, she supposed that it was knowing that her current life wasn’t an anomaly. Just another miserable existence in a long and seemingly endless line. Granted, it was a million times better than it was growing up on the farm – that was hell on Earth – but she was far from happy. She couldn’t even claim to be content. Apart from Jack, she had no one. The world was dying around them and she sometimes felt like she was the only one who felt it – this impending, unquestionable sense of everything ending. They had already lost most of world’s wildlife; entire ecosystems were collapsing almost overnight, yet everyone else just seemed to want to carry on as normal, like toddlers la-la-la-ing with their fingers in their ears. There were so many days when she didn’t even leave the flat. Daren’t turn on the radio or TV. Instead, she would sit and draw new worlds for herself on paper, so she supposed she was no better than the rest of them. Weren’t they all pretending the truth wasn’t real?

‘So, these flashbacks, will they stop now that I know?’ she asked, pulling herself back to the present.

Jack made a face halfway between a grimace and a wince but shook his head. ‘Sorry, Lil, no. If anything, you may have more than you’ve been getting.’

Lilly’s stomach lurched in complaint. The hope that this milestone would bring some relief withered as quickly as it came to bud.

‘But why now?’ she asked. He stopped rubbing her back and she heard him catch his breath and hold it for a long moment.

‘Now that’s the question I was hoping you wouldn’t ask me. Not yet anyway,’ he said quietly. She didn’t need to be an empath to spot sadness in his voice. Preoccupied with a thread on the knee of his jeans, without looking at her he said, ‘But now that you’ve asked, I have to tell you. The thing is, Lil, I’m pretty sure you’re going to like this answer even less than you liked the last one.’

CHAPTER 4

Lilly closed her eyes trying to simultaneously process what she’d just been told and prepare herself for whatever might be coming next. Feeling her anxiety levels rise, she imagined herself in what she thought of as her forest. It was the place in her mind that she’d always retreated to when real life proved too much. She pictured herself there, sitting under the great oak, Snow the lamb curled in her lap like he used to. At the thought of Snow, Lilly felt hot familiar tears pool behind her lids.

When Lilly was only seven, her father’s attempt to toughen up his only child had landed her in hospital. In an uncharacteristic fit of generosity, he had given her an orphaned lamb to raise. She’d named him Snow because he’d been found half frozen in a drift trying to suckle from his dead mother. She had loved him the minute she set eyes on him and, ignoring Jack’s warnings, had forged a deep bond with the funny little ram.

For nearly a year, Lilly and Snow were inseparable. He followed her everywhere, sharing in her adventures as she roamed the fields and woods as far from the farmhouse as she dared. At night when her parents were asleep, she’d sneak down to the kitchen to snuggle beside him in the old dog bed by the Aga where she’d tell him stories while stroking the soft velvet of his nose. Then one day in school she’d heard him – as clear in her mind as if he was standing beside her. He was screaming for her. She knew what happened to every animal on the farm, how every soul was just a lump of meat and a number on a spreadsheet to her parents, but her father had given Snow to her. He was hers to keep – and keep safe. She had climbed over the school gates and bolted for home, calling to him, telling him to hang on, that she was coming for him. That it was all just a terrible mistake. That it would be okay. His terrified cries filled her head and their shared terror pumped through her veins as she ran. But then there had been only silence.

The headteacher found her collapsed in the road almost a full mile from the school. Lilly’s parents had rushed to the hospital but when they discovered that she was physically unhurt, her father had asked her crossly what on earth had made her run off like that. She would never forget the horror on his face when she uttered the last word she would speak to anyone for more than six months – and the last word she’d voluntarily offer her father for the next nine years. She had looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘Snow.’

In the months that followed, Lilly had retreated into herself. She had spent hours in her forest where she would play with Jack and Snow, paddle in the stream and climb the trees. She felt more than safe there, she felt at peace.

Lilly opened her eyes, comprehension dawning. To her the forest had been her idea of heaven – the peace to come when this existence was finally over and done with. But now she knew the truth. There was no heaven. There was no peace, just life after miserable life. The truth of it felt like a punch and her mouth seemed to make the decision while her brain was still trying to process all of the finer details.

‘I don’t want to know,’ she blurted. ‘I mean I do. But I don’t. I need some time to get my head around all of this first.’

A look of sheer relief flooded over Jack’s face. ‘It’s entirely your call. You tell me when you’re ready,’ he said, taking her hand in his and squeezing gently.

Suddenly exhausted, Lilly slumped sideways and as Jack wrapped his arm around her, she closed her eyes and tried to imagine when she’d ever feel ready to know something that by all accounts could be worse than this.

The all clear was announced shortly after ten a.m. The capricious river it seemed had spared Lilly’s flat this time, although homes just a few hundred yards down the road hadn’t been so lucky. There had been a steady exodus of evacuees from the community centre since first light. Lilly had been one of them the first time it happened, craning her neck at the cordon, desperate to see for herself what might have befallen her home, giddy with relief when she saw that the flood water hadn’t reached her flat. Then the fourth time it happened she’d arrived only to see the fire brigade pumping sludge-coloured water out of her precious flat. She’d had to stay in a grotty B&B for three weeks. It had been packed to the gills with displaced local families and, friendly as they all seemed, Lilly had struggled with their proximity. After a lifetime spent trying not to feel the emotions of every Tom, Dick and Harry in her vicinity, she’d learned to avoid people as much as possible. Being suddenly stuffed cheek-by-jowl into the B&B with shared bathrooms and a communal dining room had felt like hell. It wasn’t that Lilly didn’t like people per se, she just didn’t know how to be around them.

‘Want to head off then?’ Jack asked after the volunteer had finished his list of updates, which included news of a landslide that had blocked part of New Road and a new nighttime curfew in Bristol and Cardiff which would mean anyone planning on travelling to friends and relatives would need to do so before nightfall.

Lilly’s eyes were on the couple with the old Labrador. The woman held a handful of crumpled tissues to her face, her eyes red rimmed and puffy, her husband, who was deep in conversation with a man in a fluorescent jacket and mud spattered waders, rubbed her back as he spoke.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Lilly said.

CHAPTER 5

In the days following the latest evacuation, Lilly tried hard to concentrate on her work. She was working on a new commission for a series of children’s books about Brian the Wonder Mouse. It was about a mouse who wanted to be a lion. He meets a witch; his wish is granted and then he realises everything he loved about being a mouse. Art had been Lilly’s escape ever since she was a child. When it came to a career, there had never been anything else she had wanted to do.

Sitting back in her chair to stretch her aching shoulders she realised that the room had darkened around her, the lamp on her desk making her into an island in the otherwise shadowy room. She glanced up at an early but rejected little watercolour of the mouse that she’d pinned to the board above her desk. ‘What do you think little fella, time for coffee?’

‘Now talking to animals is one thing but talking to drawings of animals is something else entirely.’ Jack’s voice from the darkness made her start, even though she should be used to it by now. Lilly smiled.

‘There’s a lot I could say about people who skulk around in dark corners too,’ she retorted,