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She mentally ran through her day so far, trying to remember the last time she'd looked at her hand. She'd used it to hit her alarm, get dressed, and then take Buddy for a run on the beach. He'd been the one running, not her. Tilda always joked that the only time she'd ever run was if something was chasing her.

She'd used her hand to pat him, to clip and unclip his leash. It was an unusually cold day, even for late May, so she could remember rubbing her hands together for warmth while she let him bolt up and down the beach. Then she'd returned home and searched for her keys behind the potted plant and opened her front door, letting Buddy bound past her down the hall. She'd pottered around the kitchen, made a coffee, and then sat at her desk, taking a moment to savor the sun streaming through the window before turning her attention to her emails.

"All that and I'd notice a finger missing, right?" Tilda said to Pirate, an edge of hysteria in her voice.

Pirate couldn't answer that question. Or didn't want to.

Tilda held her fist up in front of her face and, one by one, unfurled her fingers. She wiggled them. Her thumb. Check. Her index finger, and then her rude finger, as Holly had called it when she was little. All good. Her ringless finger, as her mother, Frances, called it. Check. And then...tentatively...her pinkie. Check.

She could still feel it. It was there. She hadn't lost her little finger—she just couldn't see it.

Tilda pushed back her chair and stumbled through the house to the bathroom. She clutched the basin and searched her eyes in the mirror. Wasn't it Susan Sontag who'd said, "Sanity is a cozy lie"? What if Tilda was suffering a psychotic episode or mental breakdown but didn't realize it? Was she unhinged? Surely even asking that question ruled it out. Years ago, an old friend of hers from university had been certain the CIA was following him—it was this certainty that led to his spending time in a clinic. From the little Tilda knew about the matter, people who were having a psychotic episode didn't think there was anything wrong with them. But if her mind was fine, why couldn't she see her finger? A brain tumor? She'd read that a tumor could affect your vision.

A sense of tumor, Tilda thought. Good to see I still have my sense of tumor...

Perhaps it was her vision that was playing a trick on her? Was she going blind? She looked over at the wall above the toilet, at the framed print of a meditating monkey that Leith had given her. Underneath his serene image, it said in small, ornate lettering, "Let that shit go."

The fact that she could read the poster gave Tilda some comfort. Her eyes seemed fine. She turned back to the mirror and stared into them again. No visible weird shadows or spots. And then, to her absolute horror, Tilda noticed that her right ear was missing too. She raised her hand—the one missing the finger—and drew back a lock of hair to touch the spot where her ear used to be. She could feel her ear. It was still attached to her head. But as with her finger, she just couldn't see it.

And with that, Tilda turned to the toilet and threw up.

CHAPTER TWO

Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.

—ALICE WALKER, The Color Purple

The bathroom tiles were hot, as if hell itself were under the house. Tom had been worried about the cost of underfloor heating, but Tilda had wanted the comfort. Now, as she lay on the floor for what felt like an eternity, she was glad she'd won that fight. Tom wasn't around to worry about the investment anymore, and she really needed the warmth today. It was as if she were separate from herself and observing herself lying there. Dissociation. The first time she'd ever felt anything similar was when, at thirteen, she found her father dead in the garden. Finding his lifeless body had been so inconceivable that now, when she recalled that moment, the memory came in slow motion, as if she'd been moving through mud. Or perhaps that's exactly how she had moved at the time.

Her current situation was similar: she had seen something so absurd, so unthinkable, that she felt disassociated from it. Once again, time moved slowly, waiting for her brain to catch up. It didn't. Instead, it turned to Tom.