Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

I woke early. Four o’clock is early by any standards, more so when it had taken till two in the morning to finally get to sleep. By this time I was slathered in aloe and menthol, smelling like some kind of herbal chewing gum and distinctly unhappy. Every so often my skin likes to remind me of the events almost six years ago and break out in hypersensitive protest. The doctors at the time put it down to extreme stress. I didn’t feel stressed yesterday. Perhaps my skin is prescient.

By one o’clock, feeling as if a hoard of ants had invited themselves to supper on my limbs, I would have donned something respectable enough to drive to the all night supermarket in search of antihistamines… except the damned headlight is out yet again. Grin and bear it and wait for the village shop to open at six.

By five…