Chapter One – Under The Moss

I knew I’d lost my girlfriend to moss the night she secretly crept round our moonlit garden.

Waking to footsteps crossing the kitchen and the creak of the back door, I noticed Sophie wasn’t lying beside me, and rubbing my tired eyes, I rose from bed.

Through a narrow gap between our bedroom curtains, I watched Sophie take a rusted spade from the shed and stab it into the lush carpet of moss growing beneath the oak tree. She drove the spade in hard with her foot, rocked it back & forth, and pulled it out. Side-stepping to the right, she stabbed again, repeating the action until, after perhaps five minutes, she’d marked a large rectangle in the moss. With the back of her hand, Sophie wiped sweat from her brow, then slid the spade beneath the moss rectangle, jerking it up and down, loosening the moss from its fragile hold on the soil. When finished, she dropped the spade, and hands on hips, surveyed her work.

Sophie shook off her trainers, hoisted her t-shirt over her head, and peeled off her jeans, heaping them in a pile behind her. Then, wearing just her bra and knickers, her eyes darted towards the house, and I jumped back from the window.

After a moment, convinced I was hidden by the curtains, I dared to look again.

Sophie unhooked her bra and threw it on top of her jeans and t-shirt. Then pulled down her knickers and stepped out of them, leaving them where they lay. Her naked skin shone luminous, like marble.

Kneeling down, she lifted a corner of the moss and slipped beneath it as if it were a blanket. Turning flat on her back, head poking out at the far end, she gathered the moss blanket close to her body and caressed the moss lying on her breasts, her stomach, her thighs, as she pulsed with delight beneath.

I watched, mesmerised for an hour, until an orange glow rose with the sun, and she slipped back out, gathering her clothes, and returning to the house.

As Sophie crept back to bed smelling of musty earth, I stayed still and silent. She snuggled inside the duvet, and I listened as her breathing became the steady rhythm of sleep.

When I woke in full daylight, Sophie was already out of bed, her space on the sheets smeared with mud, and dusted with fine crumbs of soil. I went to shower, and when I returned, she’d stripped the bedcovers to wash them.

Sophie launched herself into my life six months ago on a bright Saturday afternoon in May.

Returning home from the library through the park, a book tucked beneath my arm, and sunshine bathing my face, Sophie skipped towards me like a little girl. She was smiley, tanned and glowing, wearing a short summer dress revealing slim legs. Blocking my path, she grabbed my arms, pinning them firmly to my side. Alarmed, I dropped my book and shook her loose.

‘I just need to check my make-up,’ she pleaded with doe-eyes, pointing to the sunglasses I wore. ‘Please?’ Her voice was as soft and sweet as candyfloss. She smiled innocently, and I relaxed.

Again, she held my arms, gently this time, and standing on tiptoes, moved close, so her breasts pressed warmly against my chest. She smelt of sun-cream and perfume.

As she inspected her reflection in my sunglasses, I stared into her wide eyes, lost in her iris’s whirls of brown—dark through to cream, like milk diffusing through coffee.

‘You make a good mirror,’ she said.

Sophie tilted and turned her head, examining each possible viewpoint of her face, before releasing one of my arms to smooth away a strand of chestnut hair from her forehead. My arm hung loose, heavy and awkward by my side.

‘I’m looking good,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ She let go of my other arm, bent down to pick up my book and handed it to me.

‘Is it good?’ she asked, studying the cover.

My mouth dried up. So many possibilities flitted through my brain, I couldn’t choose what to say.

Sophie leaned forward and kissed my cheek—my mouth falling open in shock. Stepping back, she looked as surprised as me. Then, as quickly as she’d appeared, she dashed away without a word.

I stood stunned, stroking my cheek where her lips had touched, marvelling at the electric feel of the kiss. A tingle ran through my limbs, making me warm and light and powerful, able to hover and turn somersaults. Pretty strangers had never suddenly kissed me. But had I been the victim of some cruel joke or a bet? Was she returning to a friend, hidden in the bushes, to giggle at her antics?

‘Hey,’ she shouted behind me.

I turned, and she sauntered back towards me, hips swaying, eyes down, coy.

‘You’re a good-looking boy. Would you like to meet tomorrow? Coffee?’

My smile was so wide, I thought my face would split. A few slurred and jumbled words spilled from my mouth, and Sophie nodded and smiled until I’d suggested we meet at the park café nearby at 10am. She agreed.

We parted in opposite directions, looking back over our shoulders until out of view, and I went home, smitten. I hadn’t even asked her name.

Every minute of the evening became an infinite strand of spaghetti, every hour an ever-inflating balloon. It was disorientating, nauseating. Was this stomach-churning joy love at first sight?

I was so excited, I couldn’t eat. Ignoring my grumbling stomach, I emptied my wardrobe and drawers on to my bed—throwing clothes to the floor as too scruffy, too smart, too faded, too bright, too baggy, too tight. I viewed every option in the mirror, never more conscious of my looks: the length of my arms, the girth of my neck, the width of my shoulders, and the sheen on my forehead, the gape of my nostrils, the dryness of my hair.

I ironed a shirt and wiped my trainers with a damp cloth, before trimming my eyebrows, and cutting my chipped and bitten nails so close to the skin my fingertips were sore. My hair, in need of a trim, stuck out at funny angles behind my ears, but it was too late for a haircut now.

In bed, wide awake and trembling with excitement, I rehearsed how I’d greet her, what I’d tell her about myself, what questions I’d ask, how I’d smile and laugh.

As soon as my eyes opened that morning, excitement turned to fear. My hands fumbled with my shirt buttons, and foamy toothpaste dribbled down my front as I brushed my teeth. Hurriedly, I chose another shirt and burned my hand as I ironed it, spending ten minutes running my scolded fingers beneath the cold tap. Cornflakes dropped from my spoon to the floor as I tried to eat, and my sore and shaking hands struggled to lock the door as I left the house.

I’d never had a first date, not a proper one. There’d been a girl once, almost ten years ago at University, but it was a strange relationship and didn’t last. I’d not had any luck since. Not that I’d tried. So, when Sophie entered the café, unmistakable even beneath the wide straw hat hiding much of her face, my already nervous body leapt in temperature, cheeks flushing, the back of my neck prickling with perspiration.

I raised my hand and waved. But when she spotted me, she looked at me oddly as you would a stranger, turning her eyes away. Was she changing her mind? Would she bolt for the door?

‘Sorry,’ she said, eventually coming over, screeching a chair back on the wooden floor and sitting opposite. ‘I didn’t recognise you without your big sunglasses.’

In relief, I laughed so loudly Sophie jumped.

I apologised, and she reached across to rest her hand on mine.

‘I’m nervous too,’ she said.

I stared at our hands. It’d been so long since someone touched me, my heart slowed and my breathing stopped, the bustle of the café disappearing, until someone knocked my elbow as they headed to another table and I snapped out of my trance.

Beneath her hat, Sophie looked more beautiful than I’d remembered from the day before. Her nose was a little red where she’d caught the sun, and her straight, ivory teeth gleamed between moist lips.

Suddenly, I jerked my hand from under Sophie’s—I’d forgotten to offer her a drink.

‘Coffee?’ I asked.

Startled at my abruptness, she didn’t reply, and instead looked at her limp and lonely hand on the table.

‘Would you like a drink?’ I tried again awkwardly, sorry I’d ruined the moment.

‘A latté,’ she said, and I went to order at the counter.

As I queued, she looked at me from beneath her hat with the same odd expression, seeming to question if it was really me she’d agreed to meet—like she’d expected me to look different. I smiled back at her. Other than an absence of sunglasses, my appearance was much the same as the day before. Perhaps in a different light, she’d realised how ordinary I looked? Not the tall, broad shouldered, and square-jawed man attractive women like Sophie usually dated.

When I returned with her coffee, milky foam running down the side of the cup, she said, ‘You look so different without the glasses. Your eyes aren’t how I imagined them.’

Once I’d sat down, she stared into my eyes as if looking for something down a deep well. I tried to hold her gaze but blinked uncomfortably.

‘They’re so big and blue,’ she said, breaking her stare. ‘Like, enormous.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, unsure whether enormous eyes were considered good. No one had commented on my eyes before.

Sophie reached across the table, and I didn’t resist as her slim fingers slipped into my hair and ruffled it, each follicle excited by her touch.

‘Sorry,’ she said, sitting back, sipping her coffee, and admiring her styling. ‘You remind me of someone. But he had messier hair.’

‘Who was he?’ I asked, running my palm across my hair, flattening it down slightly.

Sophie looked out the window.

‘Just someone I used to know.’ There was a wistfulness in her voice. ‘So, tell me about yourself,’ she said, turning back to me. ‘I don’t even know your name.’

Sophie’s pink tongue appeared and slowly licked milk from her top lip. It was so sensual and erotic, a tiny thread of saliva dropped from my mouth.

‘I’m B, B—,’ I stuttered, flushed with embarrassment. ‘I’m Ben Hayward.’

‘Hi Ben,’ she giggled, tucking some loose hair under her hat. ‘I’m Sophie Marshall.’

By the time we’d finished our coffees, I’d relaxed a little. Sophie laughed at my jokes, and I lost my stutter. And with the sun shining through gaps in the heavy clouds, we left the café to walk around the park. We linked arms and Sophie nestled tightly against my side, as if she didn’t want to lose me to the wind.

As we chatted, we discovered we shared the same taste in music, the same books. We loved visiting the zoo. Our favourite animals were bears—cute and scary at the same time. Eighties’ films were the best. We refused to swim in the sea because we’d seen Jaws too young and too many times. We loved drinking tea, but ordered coffee in cafés, because £2.50 for a tea bag, hot water, and a splash of milk was a sign of everything wrong in the world. We hated pickles, and marmalade, and the jelly in pork pies. We liked people-watching on weekends, and lingering outside laundrettes, breathing in the fragrant scent of clean washing. We didn’t like board games.

I hadn’t realised someone so beautiful could be so normal.

I was thirty, Sophie was twenty-eight. We didn’t have brothers or sisters. I was an accountant for a construction firm, and Sophie worked in a stationery shop in town. Sophie was from Plymouth, and I was from Cambridge.

‘What’s Plymouth like?’ I asked.

She paused, then shrugged. ‘Boring,’ she said.

We’d both moved away from friends and family. I’d moved here for work, and Sophie once knew a friend here and liked it so much she stayed. It was a beautiful little market town, not too far from London, and Sophie loved the feel of it—the uneven cobbled roads, crooked buildings topped with ornate chimneys and rusting weathervanes, mature trees lining broad avenues.

‘But it’s hard to find friends in a new place, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I don’t really know anyone here anymore. Just people at the shop.’

I’d also found it hard to meet friends. This conversation was the longest I’d experienced with someone not related to me since moving here.

We walked laps of the park. In silent moments, Sophie looked up at me, eyes sparkling, and I wanted to kiss her, to hold her and tell her how amazing she was. I didn’t want the date to end, but unlike the beautiful day before, the wind billowed in our coats, threatening to steal Sophie’s hat, and her tightening grip on me told me she was cold.

‘Do you want another coffee?’ I asked.

‘Are you inviting me back to your place?’

‘No,’ I said, surprised she thought me so forward. ‘I meant we could go back to the café.’

‘That’s a shame,’ she said. ‘Because if you invited me back to your place, I’d say yes.’

While I grew nervous on the way home, Sophie almost danced, pulling me along as if she knew the way. It was hard to read the signals—did she expect sex? It’d been so long—I’d only disappoint.

I lived alone in a Victorian terraced house on a quiet, leafy street. After renting a spare room for years from a man who played computer games non-stop in his living room, only moving to collect takeaway deliveries from the front door, my parents helped me to buy this house. It had small rooms with high ceilings and a garden enclosed by tall, ivy-smothered walls.

When I’d moved in a year ago, I cleansed the house: vacuuming, washing, scrubbing, brushing, and giving the ceilings and walls a coat of bright, white paint. But I couldn’t afford to replace the orange kitchen and avocado bathroom suite, or the beige threadbare carpets, and ugly textured wallpaper. They remained as haunting traces of the previous occupants, an elderly couple who’d not decorated, or maybe even cleaned, since the 1970s.

‘You’ll only read about it in the papers,’ said the estate agent, as I’d looked round for the first time. ‘So, I might as well tell you. They both had cancer and euthanised one another. It’s sweet, really.’ He didn’t know what room they’d died in.

Dust hung thick in the air, lit by sunbeams through large windows, and a musty aroma, like something dead and desiccating inside the walls, permeated the house, no matter how long I kept a draft blowing through the rooms.

Before we entered through the front door, I asked Sophie to excuse the look of the house—it was a work in progress.

‘I don’t care,’ she said. ‘You should see my place.’

As I closed the front door behind us, Sophie threw her hat to the floor, pulled my face down to hers, and we kissed. Her lips were full and warm and soft. She tasted like cherry lip-salve. My lips were dry, my post-coffee breath strong and sour. I’d not kissed anyone for years, and this moist, soft, delicate kiss was the best I’d experienced.

Suddenly, she stopped kissing.

‘Give me the tour of the house,’ she said. ‘Starting upstairs.’

I led her up by her hand.

‘This is my bedroom,’ I said, opening the door to my unmade bed covered in clothes, a toothpaste splattered shirt on the floor, a half-drunk mug of tea on my bedside table.

Ignoring the mess, Sophie pulled me to the bed and sat me down. Straddling my lap, she kissed me fiercely, and pushed my chest, so I fell backwards to the springy mattress. She wiggled where she could feel my erection.

‘Have you got condoms?’ she whispered.

After we’d dated for a month, Sophie announced she was moving in with me.

‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’ she asked.

It was okay. It was fast, but I had no doubts. Sophie was the greatest thing that had happened to me. We’d seen each other every day, and Sophie stayed over most nights—it made sense she moved in. My happiness was warm and exhilarating—almost a dream, but with heightened senses. Everything looked, sounded, tasted, smelt, and felt better with her around, and it was as if I’d known her forever. I wanted to spend every possible moment together, totally in love. And I was pretty sure she loved me. Who’d be first to say, ‘I love you’?

We emptied her studio flat—a dingy room above a hairdresser’s she’d been too ashamed to let me see until leaving it. Sophie had already placed her few belongings into three heavy cardboard boxes and a single suitcase that, with some shoving and swearing, all fitted into the back of my small car. Sophie handed her keys back to her long-faced, unshaven landlord who’d come to inspect the place. He eyed me suspiciously as he checked for damages, opening cupboard doors, drawers, and the fridge. Sophie had told me he’d once caught her in just her knickers, having walked into the flat on the premise of reading the electricity meter. He winked at Sophie as we left.

By the end of the day, we’d unpacked her things—her books on our bookshelf, her clothes in our wardrobe, her toothbrush alongside mine in our bathroom. And just when I thought we’d finished, I noticed a box unopened on the floor.

‘What’s in here?’ I asked, lifting the lid. Inside, my face greeted me from a large, glossy photograph.

‘Don’t look in there!’ Sophie cried.

She rushed over and slammed the lid shut, almost crushing my hand.

Surprised, I backed away.

‘It’s only a photo of me,’ I said. ‘When did you take it?’

‘That time in the park.’ She sounded unsure—it was almost a question.

‘I don’t remember you taking it. Let me see.’ I reached for the box.

‘No!’ She slapped my hand away and pushed the box under her side of the bed with her foot. ‘The box is private. I trust you not to look. Okay?’

I nodded in shock. I’d not seen her react like that before.

Sophie stared at me seriously, letting her words sink in, before smiling, taking my limp hand, red where she’d slapped it, and gave it a gentle kiss.

I wouldn’t look in the box. But what was so secret?

Towards the end of the week, it felt like we’d lived together for ages. It was natural, comfortable, right. The dust and mustiness which had permeated the house vanished, as if Sophie’s arrival had conjured an incredible freshness from somewhere. I forgave her the discarded plates around the house, the piles of dishes by the sink she left me to wash up, the dirty clothes on the bedroom floor which, at weekends, I’d scoop up, put in the washing machine, hang them on the line to dry, and offer to iron and fold them. After having lived alone for a while, I enjoyed having someone else to tidy up after.

Sophie and I spent a lot of time in bed, exploring each other’s bodies with our fingers and tongues, tasting the saltiness of our skin, the sweetness of our saliva, stroking the soft down on our cheeks, and running our hands through the fine strands of each other’s hair. My fingers traced the outline of a tattoo on her right shoulder. The colours, probably once bright, had faded to dull green, orange, and blue.

‘Why a fish?’ I asked.

‘It’s a reminder,’ she said.

‘Of what?’

‘I’ll tell you one day. But only if you’re good.’

We had sex in every room of the house, receiving burns on our knees and elbows from the living room carpet, bruises from the sharp corners of the kitchen cupboards. We tried every sexual position we could think of, as flexible as snakes, and looked for more on the Internet. Our bodies fitted together perfectly, like two halves now whole—everything we tried brought sexual ecstasy. The smell of sweat and sex perfumed the house.

After sex, lying next to each other, panting, our sweaty bodies sticking to each other, I’d tell Sophie all the things I liked about her body: her small, neat nose, the curve of her hips, the tiny lump in her collarbone from when she’d broken it falling out of bed as a toddler. And I’d ask her what she liked about mine.

‘I like all of you,’ she said. ‘Every single piece.’

And when not having sex, we’d curl up quietly together on the sofa, like sleepy kittens, to watch television.

It was a brilliant time. I’d rush home from the office each evening, having spent the entire day thinking about Sophie. I’d daydream of her in meetings, or suddenly become aroused while staring at spreadsheets, memories of the previous evening’s sex replaying in my thoughts—my penis pushing painfully against my trousers, forcing me to stay covered by my desk until it softened.

We spent all our free time together, just Ben and Sophie, building our own perfect little world with everyone else shut out—entirely self-sufficient. We never went on dates anywhere, not to the cinema, out to dinner or on walks—we didn’t need to, happily cocooned in the cosiness of our house—but at some point, we had to let the world in.

‘It’s probably time we met each other’s parents,’ I said one night as we lay on the sofa together.

‘Why?’ asked Sophie, startled eyes turning to face me.

‘We’ve been living together for two months. It’s weird you haven’t met my parents.’

‘No, thank you.’ She looked away and stretched to pick up a glossy magazine from the floor and started leafing through it. ‘I don’t think they’d like me.’

‘Of course they’d like you. Why do you think that?’

‘Just from what you’ve told me about them.’

‘They’ll love you. They really want to meet you. Every time I talk to them, they ask me about you.’

‘And what have you told them about me?’ she asked with suspicion.

‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Just that you’re great.’

‘Yes, I am,’ she said, leaning over to kiss me on the forehead before returning to her magazine.

I was silent for a moment.

‘How about we visit your parents?’ I really wanted to meet her parents, to know the people who’d created my wonderful girlfriend, and learn about the upbringing she kept so quiet about. I imagined them telling me funny stories about her as a little girl and digging out cringy photographs—bad haircuts and frilly, pink dresses.

She pretended not to hear me, flicking to another page of her magazine.

Maybe she hadn’t even told her parents about us. Perhaps she was embarrassed by me?

‘Please? It’s normal to meet each other’s parents,’ I said.

She closed her magazine and put it down. ‘It might be normal, but I like it being just you and me. We’ll meet them one day, okay? Just not now. I want to enjoy us for a bit longer.’

Driving home from work a few evenings later, squeaky windscreen wipers clearing rain as eagerly as I planned to greet Sophie after what had been a trying day, I passed the local cemetery and spotted Sophie through the railings. Intrigued, I parked round the corner and walked back beneath my umbrella to see if it was definitely her. Sure enough, there she was, sitting cross-legged before a gravestone, a bouquet of yellow flowers gripped in her hands, and her wet hair draped, limp and slick, over her face.

I fought the urge to shout and offer her a lift home, and instead watched discretely through the railings, using the umbrella as cover. What was she doing here? Whose gravestone was it?

Sophie propped the flowers against the gravestone and busily picked up fallen leaves, creating a pile to the side. She tugged at something attached to the gravestone and paused a moment, seeming to shiver. She placed something on her palm and held it close to her eye before sniffing it and placing it carefully in her coat pocket.

Sophie looked up at the sky—the raindrops were swelling. And as she stood and waved goodbye to the gravestone, I ran back to my car, splashing through deep puddles, soaking the bottom of my trousers, and drove home with wet feet.

Sophie returned to the house shortly after, pale, shivering, rain dripping from the end of her nose.

‘I’m going to run a warm bath,’ she said, socks squelching up the stairs. ‘Will you bring me a cup of tea?’

‘You should have called me for a lift.’

‘I had something to do on the way.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing much.’

I didn’t want it to seem like I’d been spying, so I didn’t question further.

She had her bath, and I changed out of my wet clothes.

When Sophie came downstairs later, body wrapped in a towel and hair slicked back smelling of coconut shampoo, she took a seat at the kitchen table and watched me prepare dinner. I chopped onions as I told her about my morning. Then peeled potatoes as I described my long afternoon of Finance team meetings. I put a pan of water on to boil and heated oil in a frying pan while telling her of my boss’s idiot comments about our Year-End figures, and as I fried onions and six meaty sausages, I laughed about a colleague spilling her coffee over a director—how his face turned fire-engine red, and I thought she’d be fired on the spot. Sophie listened quietly, nodding occasionally, without asking questions.

‘So, how was your day?’ I asked, placing a plate of bangers and mash in front of her, hoping she’d tell me about the cemetery.

‘It was all right.’

‘Just all right?’

‘Yeah, nothing special.’

I desperately wanted to know whose grave it was but couldn’t bring myself to ask her—she’d mention it at some point.

We ate dinner quietly, with Sophie gazing at me.

I looked down at my plate, uncomfortable with the intensity with which she was looking at me, like she was about to toss her food aside and devour me instead.

‘Lift your face,’ she said. ‘I want to see you properly.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’re nice to look at.’

I laughed, and she reached out to stroke the back of my hand.

‘It’s comforting to look at you,’ she said.

‘Why do you need comforting?’

She looked away at the floor.

‘No reason,’ she said. ‘I’m just in one of those moods.’

After dinner, we watched TV. Sophie seemed distracted, eyes only half on the screen as she picked dirt from beneath her fingernails.

Later, in bed, curiosity about Sophie’s cemetery visit made me restless. I flipped from lying on my front to my back like a flailing fish, catching glimpses of the time in the illuminated bedside clock: 1.03am, 2.15am, 2.39am, 3.09am. I’d normally read to drop off to sleep, but I’d wake Sophie by turning on a light. I stared at Sophie’s sleeping silhouette, watching her chest rise and fall with her steady breath, wondering why she was secretly visiting a dead person. Was it a family member? Friend? Boyfriend? Why was I so bothered by not knowing?

When it became light, I dressed quietly, and as Sophie slept, I sneaked out of the house and drove to the cemetery.

A low mist blanketed the ground as I hurried through the graves, dew on the mown grass wetting my still soggy shoes. The silence was eerie—no dawn chorus of birds, no rustling of leaves in the wind—just the sound of my feet on the ground. Wary I may have woken Sophie on departing, I had to be quick.

By looking at the railings bordering the cemetery, I pinpointed where I’d watched Sophie, and soon found the grave I was looking for.

A bunch of wilting daffodils, petals browning at the edges, stood against the polished granite gravestone. Tufts of long grass grew up round the base and moss crept up the sides. The epitaph, engraved and gilded gold, told me this was the resting place of Eugene Gray. He’d died just nine months ago, aged twenty-seven. Beloved son and brother. Rest in peace.

I rested my hand on top of the cold gravestone.

‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘Who are you to Sophie?’

I stood there, considering the possibilities: friend, boyfriend, husband, brother, stepbrother, half-brother, cousin, uncle, colleague? I’d hoped the gravestone would give me more clues.

The grating caw of a crow in a nearby tree startled me out of my thoughts, and I headed back to the car.

On the way home, I stopped at a corner shop to buy milk. And on my return, I held it up for Sophie to see, my excuse for having left the house, before putting it in the fridge next to an almost full bottle of milk already there. She was sitting at the kitchen table, studying something in her hands, turning it over and around, inspecting it from every angle.

‘What have you got there?’ I asked.

‘A bit of moss.’ She held it up for me to see.

One side was a lush, dark green, the other pale, almost yellow.

‘Where’s it from?’

‘Off someone’s grave.’

So that’s what she’d pocketed yesterday.

‘In the cemetery?’

‘Where else?’

‘Why were you in the cemetery?’ I asked, voice full of expectation she’d now tell me about the grave.

‘I was looking for moss,’ she said defensively. ‘Why else would I be there?’ Sophie placed the moss on the table in front of her and stroked it like a miniature pet. ‘I love how soft it is.’ She picked it up, rubbed it across her cheek, and shivered like she had in the graveyard, giggling with pleasure.

‘Are you okay?’ I said.

‘It tickles.’

I raised my eyebrows.

‘So, why the sudden fascination with moss?’ I asked, willing her to tell me about Eugene.

‘There’s just something about it—something pure and alive. And moss is such a nice word, don’t you think?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Moss. Moss. Moss. Moss. Moss,’ she repeated. ‘Moss.’