‘We’re going out tomorrow,’ I’m told. ‘Make sure you wear these.’ There’s a plastic bag stuffed with clothes that smell funny. Of other places. Of other people. Before I can even ask where we’ll be going, I’m alone again.

I peek inside the bag and take out a T-shirt with ‘Sale £4.99’ written in felt pen on the sticky label. Someone else wrote that. Someone I don’t know has given me their felt-pen writing, which is more exciting than the T-shirt itself. I trace my finger over the pound sign, tracking around both nines. It looks like a girl’s writing – careful and precise with the dot in exactly the right place. She’s underlined the word ‘Sale’ with a squiggly line.

I pull off the label and grind it into the floor with my foot. I spit on it. I hate the shop girl and I hate the T-shirt with its pink pony. It’s babyish and too small but it’s clean and new and means I’m going somewhere. Maybe I won’t come back. Maybe I’ll run away. There’s a pair of pale-green shorts and some new socks too, together with a packet of jellied sweets, a hairbrush, some sanitary towels and a shopping list – even more precious than the shop girl’s writing on the label.

The items in the bag are listed on the paper. There are also things on the list that weren’t for me. My heart skips a beat. The handwriting is large and slopes down to the right… T-shirt, shorts, socks, sweets…

Then stamps, butcher, library, dentist…

I smooth out the paper. If I collect enough little things like this, maybe the inside will eventually become the same as the outside. I fold up the list carefully and put it in my secrets box – a box that used to contain tea bags. I already have a feather, a leaf, some lollipop sticks and the silver ring pull from a can of Coke. It’s already nearly the whole world in there.

---

The next day I put on my new clothes like I was told. I feel like a baby. Then the noises and the door is unlocked. I haven’t bothered to hide behind the chair today. We’re going out! It’s the day of all exciting days.

‘Hello,’ I say, dashing up for a hug. But I don’t get one. ‘Do I look nice?’ I stretch out my T-shirt. I would twirl but that would make me sick and then we wouldn’t go out.

‘Very smart.’

‘Can we go to the seaside?’

I get a thoughtful look back. ‘We’ll have to go in the car.’

‘Of course, of course!’ I squeal and jump about, even though I hate the car. The stuff in my tummy nearly comes up, but I hold it down. During the short journey I curl up into a ball on the back seat because I have to pretend to be invisible, like I’m not even alive. The engine growls like a horrid monster, making me shake as we swing around bends and go up and down a hill. Tears escape from my screwed-up eyes and my heart nearly stops from being so scared. When we park a few minutes later, I don’t want to go to the beach any more. I hate it. I hate the sea and I hate outside! I want to go back.

The breeze blows cool on my neck as the car door opens. ‘Come on, get out. It’s a beautiful day.’ I do as I’m told, unfurling my arms from around my head and sticking my feet out of the door. Blue sky is lashed with grey just like when my dad used to do his watercolour paintings. He’d often set up camp on the clifftop with a little folding stool and wooden case of paints that opened out like a magical kaleidoscope of colour. I know I’ll never see those paintings again.

‘I’m cold,’ I say, shivering.

‘Nonsense, the sun is shining.’ A hand pulls me out of the car, then drapes a coat over my head and shoulders as I stumble and stagger. ‘Get a move on.’ There’s no one about as we go along a path to the headland, my feet taking tiny fast steps to keep up. Below us is the most deserted beach in the world, big and wide. The wind makes it hard to breathe.

‘I want to go back.’

‘But I have a surprise,’ I’m told and, before I can protest, we are sitting on some rocks and I’m given a pair of huge black binoculars.

‘You’ll be able to see the whole world with these. Just mind it doesn’t see you back.’

I raise them to my eyes slowly, uncertain I even want to see the whole world. Nothing is in focus and all I can make out is the green-blue chop of the sea. It makes me feel sick again.

‘There’s nothing there,’ I say, disappointed, and the binoculars are snatched away.

‘Try now.’

And then it is like seeing the whole world! One tiny coin-sized piece of it explodes into an entire universe before my eyes.

‘What do you spy?’

‘I spy a sailboat,’ I say. ‘And there’s a man on board wearing a yellow shirt. He’s winding a handle.’ I reach a hand out in front of me, trying to touch him in case he can save me, but I can’t reach. When I take the binoculars away, he disappears as if he never existed and the boat is just a smudge on the horizon.

‘Am I like that boat now?’ I ask. ‘People only know I exist if they see me with their binoculars?’ There’s no reply so I pan around, taking a close-up look along the coastline. The rocks leap out at me in furious and fast streaks of slick black and green. A gull flashes past but all I see are the feathers on its wing. Suddenly, it’s as though I’m down on the beach, watching the waves dance over the sand as they crash onto the shore. Then I see some people – three people! Something inside my heart gets hot, like I’ve caught fire.

‘Look!’ I shriek. They’ve got a kite – a red kite with a bright blue tail made up of a hundred plastic bows. I follow the string back down to the beach, where a boy grips onto the handle, grinning, with his mother beside him. They look so happy. I unhook the binoculars from around my neck, smashing them down on a rock. The vomit goes all down my new T-shirt and I’m dragged back to the car, listening to horrid swear words and being told that I’m ungrateful and selfish. I feel like the stupidest girl alive.