DAY 1

'First times are tiny deaths wrapped up with pretty bows.' Mumma shouted over the wind roaring through the taxi. She sat in front of me, her cropped hair a black halo, hand gripping the open window. In the wing mirror, I watched her try to catch the driver's eye, to share a half-smile, but he turned up the radio and stared ahead.

'Batleigh hasn't been a zoo since before you were born. It'll be a boring house with a garden now. If that. Don't get excited.' Mumma was an old-fashioned doll, stiff-limbed but smile painted bright and firmly life-like. Pull the string in her back and she repeated plenty of reassuring mottos and sayings, but she didn't enjoy talking about the zoo she had grown up in. Not unless she was drunk.

The driver sucked his cigarette and the car crossed a cattle grid to a track trimming the fat of the moor. The radio cut in and out - something about drought - something about lower crop yields - higher temperatures - something about boom boom boo -

'Higher temperatures?' Mumma called back to me. 'Someone must have made trouble in hell.'

The driver, not used to her side-splitting sense of humour, ignored her. White ash from his cigarette whirled out through his window. He crushed the stub into the ashtray.

Something about my booty being so round, something about looking me up and down -

The moor was vast, rolling in every direction. A notched spine of land rose up in a billowing blur next to us. Nothing broke up the hot wind rushing over it. Sheep drifted below two huge tables of granite that rose to sharp tips at either end. It looked exactly like the pictures I'd received.

'Great Bat Tor,' I called, cupping my fingers and thumbs to frame it. 'Formed when the hare-witches turned the bat-witch to stone for-'

'Loveday. Facts only, please,' Mumma warned me.

'Great Bat Tor. Four hundred and twenty-two metres above sea level,' I muttered, to myself. 'Formed by intense weathering over millions of years.'

My feet slid on my sweaty flip-flops, toes stretched to grip the ends. The heat felt like being trapped in a witch's stove. I could hardly see through the lob of wind. I thought I felt my hair lashing across my face. But the doctor had told me it was not possible. Phantom sensations, painful or otherwise, can exist in a limb, tooth, eye or breast, whereas hair has no nerve endings. Whether it exists, or not. Hair is, essentially, a dead thing. It could not be in my mouth, tickling my tongue, flossing my teeth. Not now I was bald.

- something hosepipe ban - something dogs suffocate in cars - something he's never known a girl like me before -

'You don't enjoy a moor.' Mumma watched it fly past, straining her voice - not louder, just harder - to make sure I heard. 'You survive it. In any inhospitable landscape, the sun and the rain never know when they've gone too far.'

Mumma wasn't happy about returning to Batleigh. She had taken me away from Batleigh Zoo as a baby, when her mother put me in a cage 'for safekeeping'. She had never planned to take me back. She was gloomy, I was delighted. Open space everywhere. No doors, no walls, no flat. No Temperance School for Boys. No boys at all. I was free of them.

- someone's a-knock knocking on his door -

We slowed to pass two ponies. The driver nodded to the rider of a grey, stubby one. The girl wore short, hacked jeans, boots caked in mud and manure, with a bunch of curly orange hair bundled on her head, messily, like she didn't appreciate it. She rode bareback, a narrow, white piece of paper rolled between her lips. When she looked in through the car window and smiled, I pretended not to see. Behind her, a proud, chestnut pony tugged at its reins and feinted, sidestepping, as the car overtook it. Its rider pulled in the reins. She had black handfuls of hair, like mine had been, pulled into a ponytail so high it wobbled like a paper crown on top of her head. Her grubby boiler suit was rolled up to her calves, arms tied around her tiny body, and the thin straps of her vest had been tucked under her armpits. She ate a soft, twisting lolly. Sticking her tongue out, creaming it with green and yellow ice, then snapping it back into her mouth, as she watched us pass.

We entered the woods surrounding the old zoo. The driver took out the car's cigarette lighter from below the radio. It was neon with heat and smoke clouded the car. The sunken lane was hemmed in by drystone walls and trees. Everything was pine-black after the sun.

- never, he says, never -

I was blinded by the sudden lack of light, eyes still on the pocket sun of the lighter, when a large, dark animal streaked across the road.

'Shit.' The driver stopped suddenly. The car squealed and threw itself against me, hitting me with the back of Mumma's seat.

- sounds like he's definitely never known a girl like me before -

The driver switched the radio off. 'Shit.' He patted his trousers where he'd dropped the lighter. 'Shit.'

I sat up and grabbed the door handle, to get out, to get a look at the animal, but Mumma's hand shot past me and slammed down the lock.

'What was that?' I said. 'Where's it gone?'

Through the window, the black bars of the trees were webbed with lades and rides cutting down from the high moor to the river. In between them, staring at me, was a boy. His hair was mulched like he'd been pulled out of the earth. His grubby white T-shirt said OASIS, and his shorts were long, to his knees, with a pocket for everything. He lifted a camera from around his neck and aimed it at me. I slid low, into my seat, hoping Mumma hadn't noticed me notice him. When I peeked out again, thank goodness, he was gone.

'You can get out here.' The taxi-driver fixed his eyes on the mid-distance, hands clenching and unclenching the steering wheel. 'I'm not going up there.'

Ahead was a steep gravel drive, yellow with weeds and riddled with nettles taller than me. In the overgrown verge beside it, a big, faded sign in looping hand-written font had collapsed from one of its posts. The corner plunged into the ground. Batleigh House & Zoo. A painted hand, severely wristless, pointed into the sky. Another hand pointed into the ground, advertising the car park. Below them both, sitting upright like a pet - fluffy muzzle but mouth yawning wide and toothy - was a cartoon of a tiger. Although Batleigh Zoo had never had a tiger, not exactly.

Mumma walked so fast towards the drive, she nearly trotted into a run. Suitcase in one hand, handbag in the other. Head reeling left and right, scanning the trees either side of the road.

'What was that?' I called.

'What was what?' she said, very, very brightly. 'Keep up.'

'That thing in the road?'

'What thing in the road?' She stopped next to the sign, and dropped the suitcase to stretch her hand.

'It was massive. It was the size of a-'

'It was nothing. It was a black fox. It was a badger. You see them sometimes in the early evenings.'

'But it was huge. It was like a massive - cat.' I jogged to join her.

'Lowdy.' She spoke warmly, tweaked my T-shirt at my shoulders. 'You didn't see anything. We've been up all night. Packing. Cleaning. I made difficult decisions very quickly. I'm not blaming you, but we're both tired and I can't have this nonsense on top of everything else.'

'The driver was too scared to keep going-'

'The driver stopped to let us out, darling. Because we'd arrived.' She flicked a hand towards the sign, but her eyes were behind me, to the side of me. 'You're still recovering, Lowdy-Loo. No monsters or witches.'

'Oh,' I said, remembering my illness, disappointed. 'Yes. Sorry. But I wasn't talking about monsters or-'

'Last night was horrible, but the important thing is to stay focused. Don't let it set you back. No fibbing.' She...