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choose where we go.”
    “I can pay,” muttered Gray. “Mum gave me some money.”
    Which hadn’t helped, not at all, and now they were here in the drizzle. Just about the only people in the whole park.
    Isis spun round again. Gray had already given up on the playground. He’d found some bits of biscuit in his coat pocket, and he was busy throwing crumbs to some eager, soggy pigeons.
    “This is so cringeworthy,” he’d said, as they walked behind their giggling, hand-holding parents. “Dad could’ve waited. Next weekend I’m at Mum’s anyway.” He glared at their backs. “I don’t know why we couldn’t just stay at home and let them go off in the rain.”
    “Cally would never leave me,” said Isis. She blushed – she’d made herself sound like a baby.
    “What about when you go to your dad’s?” asked Gray.
    Isis shook her head. “I don’t.”
    Gray looked at her. “You don’t see him at all?”
    Isis shook her head again. “He left after…” She paused. Did Gray know what had happened to Angel? Had Cally told Gil? “He travels a lot. But I do get presents from him, at Christmas and my birthday. And he sends me letters, he always knows exactly what I’m up to.”
    Her dad. His absence was like a heavy coat, one she couldn’t take off. She’d never really stopped wishing for him to be there when she got home from school, or to remember he also had a daughter who was alive. After he’d left, she’d wished for him every night, two years solid. Every birthday she made the same wish, blowing out the candles on her cake. It hadn’t done any good. She and Cally had moved to a flat, and their old house went up for sale.
    “What does he do?” asked Gray.
    Isis looked at her shoes, water-darkened. “He works on cruise ships,” she mumbled. “He does shows for the passengers.” She looked up, glaring. “Not rubbish or anything. He does proper magic, and hypnotism and stuff. He’s really good.” She held herself rigid, daring him to make fun.
    Gray didn’t, only nodding. Then he tilted his head a little. She was learning to read him, and a tilt meant a question. She jumped in with her own, blocking.
    “Why are you called Gray? Is it short for something?”
    Gray rolled his eyes. “I wish it was, cos then I could call myself something else.” He nodded at Gil, holding hands with Cally. “It was Dad’s choice. That’s what Mum says anyway. It’s cos he’s such a UFO freak.”
    Isis looked at him.
    “What’ve UFOs got to do with it?”
    Gray sighed. “The greys. They’re a type of alien. They go on about them all the time at his conferences. Anyway, he thinks aliens are super intelligent and all that, so he wanted to name me after them.”
    Isis felt a laugh, but managed to swallow it.
    “Why didn’t your mum stop him?”
    Gray shrugged. “He has this effect on women, you know? He can make them do what he wants. Not Mum any more, not since she left him, but with all the rest…” He stopped. “I mean, he’s different with Cally, but, you know, he’s had a lot of girlfriends…”
    In front of them, Gil put his arm around Cally’s waist.
    All the rest.
    Isis desperately wanted to ask Gray about Gil’s other girlfriends, and at the same time she wished he hadn’t mentioned them.
    They walked on, in awkward silence.
     
    “Whee! Faster!” Angel squealed on the roundabout.
    “Don’t you care?” whispered Isis. “Look at them!”
    Angel glanced back at Isis, the shapes of the playground showing softly through her.
    “Mummy happy,” she said, as if that answered.
    They whirled on, the drizzle slicking over Isis’s face and frilling her eyelashes with water. Gray was a nearby blur, hunched against the weather. The rain felt like a cold compress, calming her. It fell cool onto her cheeks, then cooler. The roundabout turned again, and the air grew colder still. In a sudden, unnatural change, her breath was a cloud of steam, and she was circling through drops of ice.
    She