Scratchy – Stinky – she dances around Nana’s sunshiny garden, skipping along sweet-smelling flowerbeds, renaming plants – Shivery – Sickly – confident because Nana’s here and laughing, changing names shared with the vanished girls (Rose – Daisy – Poppy – Lily) who whisper and tap on her window every night.

Nobody heeds childish imagination. Until she vanishes, too.

Deborah writes at an old desk surrounded by five hundred pet bugs.