My hands are bandaged, but otherwise I am uninjured. Outwardly, there’s nothing wrong with me. I have heard them say it is a miracle we are both alive, particularly Tristan.

The last thing I remember is the screaming. I remember that because I wasn’t the one doing it. It wasn’t Tristan or Flint, either. It was the house. Sargasso. The house was screaming, keening like wind flung helpless into the sky on a hot day.

They have given me a laptop, not a pen and paper. The doctor said it would be less painful to type with one finger than to hold a pen. But I expect the real reason is that they are afraid of what I might do with a pen. I heard him tell the nurse—when you don’t talk people assume you are deaf as well as mute—that the laptop is important because it gives me the means to communicate in case I want to get it off my chest. And I suppose this is what I am doing here, although I am not sure what the point is. They didn’t believe me when I was a child, why should they believe me now?

I have a bed, and a chair, and my own bathroom. I had an IV drip too, but they have taken that away now. The room is small but it has a window high up on one wall, cracked ajar, just enough to let in a little light from the outside world. And a little air.

And this evening after dinner, I thought I smelt the sea. I thought I smelt Sargasso, too, in the ashes blowing towards me…

Continue reading the extract here…