If she stirred, she knew he'd wake, and she needed some time before that happened. She lay perfectly still, her mouth dry, her body feeling weak. But something had changed. She could sense a dark energy above her, waiting to be summoned. Those days after the tragedy, when she'd been inconsolable, she'd begun to lose her mind. She kept replaying how her mother must have felt, those moments before the close. And alone – her mother would have hated that.

The girl had hoarded a stash of her mother's sleeping pills, and on the street she scored a whole batch of other stuff. She had sat in her room, the pills in line, like tiny soldiers waiting for her orders. She liked the colours of them, lots of yellow, red and blue – blue, her mother's best loved shade. Walking point on those items of relief was the bottle of vodka. She took a deep swig, then . . . eeney, meeny, miney . . . let's have a blue, then a red . . . and why not two yellow, another tot of vodka. She felt the raw alcohol light up her stomach, the voice in her head asking, 'Are you going to kill yourself?'

And the other voice, still in its infancy – the dark one – answering, 'I just want the pain to stop.'

That all-encompassing grief had made her howl in silent anguish, her head tilted back, her mouth wide open but forming no sound, like a mute hyena. Her brother had come upon her thus and, frightened, he'd backed away, unable or unwilling to try and give her solace. The girl's voice, the voice of her childhood, attempting one last rally as she popped three red ones – such pretty colours – more alcohol, that young voice saying, 'Suicide is eternal damnation.'

The dark tone spitting back, 'And this, this . . . the way I am, a quivering mess of grief and anguish . . . is this not pure damnation?'

She didn't remember anything after that, only the dark voice sneering, 'We rule now.'