MORNING SERIAL

FINALLY, I was back in my bedroom where my Russian dolls stared at me from the windowsill like mute choristers. Their big, navy eyes smiled above rosy cheeks, all of them dressed in violets, with parted yellow hair; a gift from Mam after my first ballet exam. She had hung a kingfisher blue costume – a hand-me-down from the red-haired girl – on the wardrobe door, where it taunted me with sequins that glittered in the sun.

I’d been on good terms with summer for years, but now, we were unhappy with each other. Its glare made it impossible for me to shut my eyes. There was the sound of swallows. I watched their silhouettes, shadow puppets; I imagined their red throats diving at me, and then, squawk, they were only spindles of light flying through the gaps in the dusky pink curtains, stalking the glass with golden beaks. That was Secret Haven trying to get in, but it wasn’t allowed, not on the first day back at school, maybe not ever.

When I stood up, everything looked the same but felt different. Do I have company? Has someone followed me from one of my dreams? I shook my pillow upside down, but not even a moth fluttered out, and neither did Melody.

The floorboards creaked beneath my feet, and it struck me that our house was as brittle as papier mâché. It looked sturdy from the outside, but it felt as though, say I was to knock at the surface a bit too hard, it would tremble, and, say I stepped too far forward, I would fall – slippers and all – through all the paint and scrunched-up newspaper, and straight into another planet. I would fall through to the earth’s centre, where Dad said it was too hot for anything to survive. He’d said before that the earth was burning up more and more every day, and so we needed to look after the sky, to make sure we didn’t pollute it with unnecessary matter. The trouble was most things mattered to me.

My green check school dress was sitting upon the wicker chair, with my cardigan around its shoulders as though someone was already wearing it. Mam must have crept in last night. She did that kind of thing for Dad and me sometimes, mapped out our worlds.

> Unspeakable Beauty by Georgia Carys Williams is published by Parthian at £10.99. parthianbooks.com

CONTINUES TOMORROW