The Returners by Gemma Malley

to respond to that so I get left alone.
    I feel like I’m being watched. Paranoia? I pause outside an estate agent’s and turn slowly, like I could just be looking around idly deciding which way to go. There’s a woman behind me, walking towards me. She looks like the woman who was in my garden. I feel myself stiffen. I stare at her; she’s looking at me. But is it because she is the woman, because she’s following me, or is it because I’m staring at her? It’s hard to know. She walks past me, then she’s gone. I turn back to the estate agent’s window. I’m sweating again. It’s happening – I’m actually going mad. I’m scared. I’m really, really scared.
    I try to slow my breath. It’s in your head, Hodge. It’s all in your stupid head.
    That’s the thing with emotions. They don’t exist. Like the freaks. If you can push them to one side, if you can ignore them, refuse to acknowledge them, then you can get on with stuff, then you can live. But if you don’t, if you let them in, they consume you, don’t they? You see it on television, people breaking down, people losing it. I don’t ever want to lose it. I’m afraid of what would happen if I did. Better to be in control.
    So that’s what I do. What I’ve always done.
    Well, not always.
    Not before Mum . . .
    I cried at her funeral. That was the last time. And once I started, I felt like I’d never stop, like my insides were overflowing and cascading down my face. I thought I’d get swept away. I wanted to get swept away, wanted to drown, like her, to be with her, to be safe again.
    Mum always made me feel safe. Like a raft, like a pair of armbands. I didn’t know it when she was here, didn’t notice it. But as soon as she was gone, I felt it. Suddenly I was exposed, vulnerable. But not any more. Now I’ve got my own armour. Now it’s been so long since I cried, I’m not sure I even know how to.
    Slowly, gingerly, I start to walk again. Ignore the freaks and they’ll go away. They don’t exist. I can do this. Just walk straight ahead.
    I’m walking towards a man. He’s looking at me strangely. Because I look weird? Because I’m sweating, my hands in fists, looking around like a freak? Or because he’s one of them? I meet his eyes – they’re like hers. Pained. Mournful. I turn around and start to run. I’m losing my mind and I can’t stop it, I can’t do anything about it. I want them to go away. I want them to leave me alone.
    I run into the shopping centre, find a bench, sit down. I breathe – in, out, in, out. Children are playing on a Bob the Builder car thing that jigs up and down. They laugh ecstatically, beg their mothers for another go when it’s finished. No one’s looking at me. There’s a woman selling flowers who barely gives me a second glance. I’m just sitting on a bench, like a normal person.
    Not like a normal person. I am a normal person.
    ‘I’m normal,’ I mutter to myself. ‘Everything is normal.’
    And then I see the girl. The girl with curly hair who was down at the river. She’s walking towards me. I’m certain it’s her. My heart stops. Who am I trying to kid? Things aren’t normal at all. My nails are digging into my palms. I can’t look away. I’m imagining it. Of course I am. She’s just a girl, that’s all, a girl who happens to be walking right towards me. She sits down on the bench next to me. I’m frozen; I can’t move, can’t think, can’t do anything. She’s just sitting there, looking at me. She’s not making a phone call or reading a magazine; there’s no reason for her to be sitting on this bench, on my bench, when there are others free. She saw me and she came and sat down. And now she’s sitting there, inches away.
    I can’t look at her.
    I have to look at her.
    I take a breath. I want it to be a deep breath but it isn’t, it’s shallow; my lungs won’t take in more air than they need for survival. I turn.
    Her eyes look like their eyes. I’m not imagining it. I