The last time anyone had held her hair like that while she was sick it had been the same gentle but strong hands. She'd been eleven, and home from school with a twenty-four hour bug.

"It can't be," she echoed her mum as she stood and backed away, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"This is a dream." But had she ever had a dream this real? She could smell the stale cigarette smoke and taste the vomit in her mouth. "Maybe a hallucination. Someone could have slipped something into my coffee, yeah?"