“I am hungry, I am hungry, I am.” I whispered it until my eyes were heavy, and just before they closed I whispered, “Call me lovey again.” “What, lovey?” she said. And then I was asleep, and when I woke in the morning she was gone. I still had a strand of yellow-brown hair tangled around my fingers, kinked and dead. I pressed Molly’s body closer to mine. She whimpered, and I felt her fist open and close around folds of my jumper. She liked it here. She liked Linda. But she needed me. “I didn’t leave you, lovey,” I said into her shoulder. “I didn’t leave you.”
