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sitting opposite her. ‘Grace, you have ID, your papers? Somewhere to sleep?’ he asked.
    Grace couldn’t tell how much time passed, seconds or minutes, before she realised she was shaking her head. So tired, the edges of objects turning bright and hazy like a dream — the saltshaker, the gold band squashing his fat finger. But something in her remained coldly alert, like an animal. He shifted in his seat, tipped his wrist to check his watch, picked up an empty sugar wrapper and folded it into neat squares. She could sense him rather than see him: hefty, soft around the middle, built with a slouch.
    He folded the wrapper into a zigzag shape. ‘I have one spare room. Have a lot of junk in there, just equipment and things like this, but … it’s not so bad.’ He released the wrapper and it squirmed on the tabletop. ‘A room okay for sleeping. Nothing funny.’
    Grace kept quite still. She wondered how she looked from the outside, whether the blank chill in her stomach showed in her face. What would Vivien Leigh do? She wouldn’t just sit here like a lump. Grace scanned the walls, but Vivien wasn’t there. She composed her face while she considered what to say. Things could go one way or another, that was all she knew. She had no lines; she would have to improvise.
    This had always been her downfall — this inability to read a stranger. That had been Tally’s strange knack.
    Not that name: push it down, bury it, think of something else. Not charcoal and burned hair and vomit and bad dreams. Block it. Erase. Stop. Cos if you fall into that black hole you won’t ever get back out.
    Had she searched long enough? Had she missed something? How long did it take her to scramble down the bank, over the railway lines and through the trees, race over the scorched lawn, get as close as she could, until the heat rose up against her like a wall?
    Her fault: she’d made her little sister go back for cigarettes. And after the explosion had ripped the night to pieces and flames tore up into the sky, Grace hadn’t checked everywhere. She’d been too weak, too terrified to search until she knew for sure. Too frightened of what she might find down there. Not with the heat battering against her skin, the siren crying towards her; not when she imagined her sister’s face burning with a wordless scream, a scream shaped like her own name. She hadn’t kept searching.
    No. She had run like a dog.
    It was time to speak. Grace picked a phrase at random, based on the whiteness of the man’s shirt. ‘I’m a very light sleeper,’ she said. It sounded right.
    He nodded and moved back behind the counter, started switching things off. He brought her a glass of orange juice, locked the door, dropped the blind on the street, opened the till and began to count money. ‘Not too long,’ he called.
    She drank the orange juice without tasting it and watched him: a large man, with dark smudges under his eyes, stacking notes into one hand.
    He shut the till and sat down opposite her again. He leaned forward, the downlights carving lines into his face. ‘You are very beautiful,’ he began. ‘But listen to me, please. After tonight you never go somewhere with a man you don’t know. You don’t trust people. People!’ He made a short sound, almost like a laugh. ‘Not me. No, you don’t worry there. Me — I’m the exception of the rule. But I hope to god you remember this.’
    She looked at him. He was lifting a set of keys from a hook, asking her name, ushering her out the back door of the cafe.
    â€˜Grace — so young. You sleep in my spare room, a good long sleep, and tomorrow you go back home. Go home to your family, make peace, forget your trouble. Don’t stay in this city, these streets, it’s no good. Come down here, watch out for the bins.’
    Grace followed him into the night like a sleepwalker.

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