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okay now. I’m back, I’m here again.’
    We watched her as she stood at the kitchen counter serving the food, the back that was so familiar to us, that never lied. We wanted to believe her because she was our mother and we needed to believe her, but something about her tone and the forced straightness in her spine made us fear the worst. She wanted to be with us, but she wasn’t, not really.

9
    â€˜My dad’s up in the tree.’ I said it to Megan just like that. Even though I’d sworn to Mum I wouldn’t tell a soul, she had. And, anyway, he was my discovery so it seemed that I had the right to tell who I chose and Megan was my best friend, and it just came out in a spear of words I couldn’t hold back.
    â€˜I can see him,’ Megan said. Her head was resting on the bar at the back of the swing. Her feet were stretched across to my seat and mine to hers. She pointed to the sky. A fleece of clouds slipped past, riddled with holes. I searched through it for ages trying to find him.
    â€˜See his face?’ she asked.
    I couldn’t. The cloud began to stretch. ‘He’s gone now,’ she said.
    â€˜I didn’t mean he’s in heaven. He’s in the tree, I told you.’
    â€˜Is he?’ she asked.
    I nodded.
    I could see Megan didn’t believe me. ‘Didn’t he go in a box?’ Megan’s sandy hair fell across her freckled face.
    â€˜Yeah, he was, but now he’s in the tree.’
    â€˜We don’t go in boxes,’ said Megan. ‘We get burnt.’
    The swing rocked slowly and Megan’s leg dipped down to the grass.
    I couldn’t work out which was worse, the silence of the box or the horror of the flames.
    â€˜I just want to be left,’ I said, ‘and I’ll find my own way.’
    â€˜They’ve got to put you in something.’
    â€˜On the beach,’ I said. ‘If they have to. Wrapped in my favourite quilt.’
    Megan was looking again to the racing clouds above us. ‘Witch jumping over a hurdle,’ she said.
    I watched as the witch’s long white front leg grew longer and her face narrowed to a point.
    â€˜Now it’s a dragon.’
    â€˜I see it,’ said Megan.
    â€˜Becoming an angel.’
    â€˜With a bugle.’
    â€˜Baby riding a pterodactyl holding a club!’ I yelled.
    â€˜Over there.’ Megan pointed to a new bank of clouds. ‘Elephant with long toes.’
    The wind pulled at the cloud elephant, elongating its toes, bending them into talons.
    â€˜Claws,’ I said.
    â€˜Ribbons,’ Megan contradicted me.
    â€˜Claws!’ I said louder, sitting upright and rocking our giant carriage-like swing. Megan dropped her head back to take another look but our cloud elephant had already joined a froth of clouds on the edge of the sky.
    â€˜I want to see him then,’ said Megan, slipping down to the ground.
    â€˜You can’t see him. You can only talk to him. Except we’re all banned and Mum said they’d take her away if they found her up in the tree again.’
    â€˜Take her away to where?’ asked Megan.
    â€˜I dunno.’
    â€˜You’d be like an orphan.’ Megan was excited.
    â€˜I might have to come to your school,’ I thought aloud.
    â€˜That’d be good.’
    I wasn’t sure. ‘Do they do God at state school?’
    â€˜Course,’ she said.
    â€˜Can’t be the same one as ours?’
    We had to think about that. If we had the same God, then why did we go to different schools?
    â€˜It has to be different,’ I said.
    We were baffled. ‘If I’m a special Catholic,’ I said, ‘at Catholic school – do they tell you that?’
    Megan drew a blank expression. Obviously they didn’t.
    Was it all right we were different? Did it matter my school said it was better to be a Catholic and I was a better person because of it. They must be wrong, because I loved Megan