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“Not backwards.”

“The cheek of you!” I laughed. “This is my bed, you know.”

Ivy ignored me, and I wrestled Nora’s freezing hands away, practically hanging over the edge. “Nora! I’m going to end up on the floor. Just put some gloves on, for goodness’ sake.”

“But then my fingers would get too hot!”

“If you’d just let us put the heating on, you wouldn’t have to deal with any of this,” Ivy said. “You could even make snow angels in the bed with all the space you’d have.”

“I did put the heating on,” I reminded her. “Long enough to heat your rooms. They would’ve stayed warm if you hadn’t left every single door open… again.”

“It was an accident.”

Nora snorted against my back. “How do you accidentally leave every bedroom door open in January?”

“I was bringing all your washing in. You’re welcome!”

“And you couldn’t… I don’t know… close the doors after you’d finished?”

“I got distracted.”

“By what?”

There was a pause before Ivy mumbled, “A spider.”

“A spider?” Nora and I said together.

“I had to move it!”

“For forty minutes?”

“It wouldn’t cooperate.”

I started laughing, and Ivy protested. “Don’t laugh! It kept running under things.”

“You left every door open and froze the entire house because you were negotiating with a spider?”

“I wasn’t going to kill it!”

That finished me.

I opened my eyes, their laughter still so clear in my head that I could almost believe they were beside me. God, I miss them. I missed them so much it hurt.

They must be terrified by now, and probably exhausted. I bet Ivy was harassing the police every day, making TikTok diaries about my disappearance and contacting every true-crime podcaster she could find. She loved all that stuff: murders, disappearances and cold cases. For someone so bubbly, she liked some very disturbing things, and I chuckled at the thought.

Nora had probably rallied anyone who would listen into search parties and shamed everyone else until they joined in. She was painfully shy most of the time, but give her a cause and she turned into an avenging angel. I smiled at the thought. Just rehoming stray kittens was enough to bring it out in her, and God help Mr Edwards for trying to poison the foxes that got into his bins.

My sisters were relentless, and I just hoped they hadn’t fallen too far down the alien rabbit hole. I knew I would have in their shoes. What had happened to me was completely insane, and I still hadn’t worked out where I was. An alternate world? A parallel universe? Neither was that far from the alien explanation. As far as Earth was concerned, I was in an alien world.

“Please, please don’t decide I was taken by aliens. And even if you do, don’t tell anyone. Especially Mrs Gil. She’ll tell the entire village before you’ve even made it out of the police station.”

My poor sisters. We’d already spent most of our lives trying to escape the alcoholic’s daughters label. Now they had a missing sister, and if they told people what they’d seen that night, they risked being labelled lunatics too.

What if people started saying they’d done something to me themselves? The thought made my stomach turn. People could be cruel, and once they started talking, you never knew what Ivy and Nora might be accused of.

Tears slipped down my face. The helplessness was the worst part of being here. I couldn’t call them, reassure them or do anything to make their lives easier. They’d have to go on benefits just to keep paying the rent. Ivy would keep the heating on all day, and Nora would blame her when the bill came. Without me there to stop them from arguing, they’d drive each other mad, wouldn’t they?

“Please don’t fight with each other.”