It is raining again and there is a bad mood in the cottage. Me and Mum both. She saw the mud on my jeans and wanted to know where I'd been and I said to see the cows. I didn't tell her about Alice but I don't know why. Alice is a secret and Mum is endless secrets and you can't mix secrets. They won't go together.

Since then she's been pacing, touching things. She's not manic yet but I can feel it coming. Warming up. Like the fire alarm at school which starts just a tiny hum and rises up and up and up until it's screaming. The cottage is so small that there's nowhere I can be that isn't where she is too.

"You can't go places without me, you understand? You cannot. You don't know how dangerous the world can be." She's talking like she's trying not to shout. "You don't know. It's all a fun little adventure to you, isn't it? You haven't had any of the bad stuff. All you're running away from is being bored."

She is only half talking to me, and so I go into the bedroom and get into bed. Maybe if I sleep Mum will sleep too. But she comes in and says, "This isn't how it was meant to be, you know? You know that? It was meant to be better than this. It will be. Once we get away." I look at her from bed and nod and she nods and goes back out and I can hear her moving around. She comes back. "I would have taken you. All right? The cows. The bloody, bloody cows. I would have done."

I nod again. For a while Mum bangs around the kitchen and then she goes out and there's quiet for a while. Just the rain drumming. She comes back. I hear her dump bags of groceries in the kitchen. When she comes back into the bedroom she's wearing a coat and hat and scarf and gloves. "There's enough food there for a couple of days, okay? Don't go outside." She isn't looking at me. She's speaking quickly. "Lock the door as soon as I'm gone."

I sit up in bed. I feel very afraid suddenly. Like there's something big and terrible and alien on the roof. Something stretched and weird. I ask her where she's going, but she's fussing with her gloves, yanking the fingers to get them the right way out, and she doesn't even look like she hears.

"I won't be long. Not far. Two days. Lock the door and don't open it to anyone. Not anyone." Mum can't get the glove the right way out and she makes a noise like a cat and throws it on the floor. She doesn't look at me. She stamps out of the room and the door of the cottage bangs shut and she's gone. Just the rain again.

After a very long time I get out of bed. I take the duvet with me, over my shoulders like a shell to hide under. I get the keys from the table in the kitchen and I lock both locks on the door.