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right now. And the only person who can answer that question is Joe. I watch dawn tracing the shadows to the beat of my tick-tock .
    It’s 27 June and we’re in the school playground under a blue sky, so blue you’d think we were anywhere but Edinburgh. The sleepless night has sharpened my nerves.
    I make straight for Joe, with more than purpose in my stride. But before I’ve had a chance to say anything, he grabs my shirt collar and hoicks me off the ground. My heart creaks, my anger overflows, the cuckoo hisses. Joe taunts the crowd around us.
    ‘Take off your shirt and show us what you’ve got on your chest. We want to see your thing that goes tick-tock.’
    ‘Yeah!!!’ roars the crowd.
    With a swoop of his arm, he rips off my shirt and jams his nails into my dial.
    ‘How does this open?’
    ‘You need a key.’
    ‘Hand it over.’
    ‘I haven’t got it here, it’s at home, so leave me alone.’
    He picks the lock with his little finger, niggling at it furiously. The dial gives way in the end.
    ‘See, we don’t need a key after all! Who wants to have a grope?’
    One after another, students who’ve never said a word to me take it in turns to tug on my clock hands and activate my gears. They’re hurting me and they’re not even looking at me. The cuckoo can’t stop hiccuping. They clap and laugh. The whole playground joins in: ‘ Cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo-cuckoo! ‘
    Something flips inside my brain. Dreams anaesthetised for years, pent-up rage, humiliation . . . everything is headed for the floodgates. The barrage is about to give way. I can’t hold back any more.
    ‘Where’s Miss Acacia?’
    ‘I don’t think I heard you properly,’ says Joe, twisting my arm.
    ‘Where is she? Tell me where she is. I’ll find her, whether she’s here or in Andalusia, do you hear me?’
    Joe pins me face down to the ground, so I can’t move. My cuckoo is singing at the top of its voice, I feel like my oesophagus is on fire, something’s changing inside me. Violent spasms shake me every three seconds. Joe turns around triumphantly.
    ‘So, you’re setting off for Andalusia just like that?’ he asks, through gritted teeth.
    ‘Yes, I’m leaving! And I’m leaving today!’
    My eyes are bulging, so is my throat, and my movements too. I’m turning into a pair of shears that will chop up anyone and anything.
    Pretending to be a dog sniffing a turd, Joe brings his nose close to my clock. The whole playground bursts out laughing. This is too much. I grab him by the neck and ram his face against my clock hands. His skull cracks loudly against my wooden heart. The clapping stops dead. I deal him a second blow, more violent this time, then a third. Time seems to stand still. I’d love a photograph to document this moment. His first cries for help shatter the silence, just as the first spurts of blood splatter the nicely ironed clothes of the creeps in the front row. When the hour hand impales itself on the pupil of his right eye, his socket turns into a bloody fountain. All Joe’s terror is concentrated in his left eye, as it watches the shower of his own blood. I relax my grip and Joe yelps like a poodle whose paw has accidentally been trodden on. The blood trickles between his fingers. I don’t feel the slightest bit of compassion for him. Silence follows, and it lasts.
    My clock’s burning. I can barely touch it. Joe doesn’t move. Is he dead? I’d like him to stop wiping his feet on my dreams, but I don’t necessarily want him dead. I’m starting to feel frightened now. The sky shimmers with beads of blood. All around us, kids stand like statues. Perhaps I really have killed Joe. Who’d have thought that one day I’d be worried about Joe dying.
    I run away, the whole world on my heels as I cross the playground. I climb up the left pillar and clamber on to the school roof. The realisation of what I’ve just done chills me to the bone. My heart produces the same noise as when I first fell in love with the