I try to fight it, but I am on my knees before I realise what's going on. Then I'm on the ground, and it's dragging be backwards. I stretch out an arm, and draw a breath to say one of the half-formed words in my mind, but then I am gone, and it is too late.

*

It's twilight.

That's the first thing I notice.

The second thing I notice is the wonderfully familiar oak floor I'm currently facing. I breathe a sigh of relief. I know this floor well. I'm in Grandma's house.

The third thing I notice is music, coming from what I later identify as the small TV.

I look up, and there's Mom. She's tied her hair back, and she's young, very young. My age.

She's standing with her back to me, making a cake and singing along to what I later recognise as 'Resolve', by the Foo Fighters. Cake-making implements are all over the worktop: flour, a half-used tub of margarine, a spoon with butter all over it, weighing scales, pink dye, a box of icing sugar..

This scene is so familiar that I forget, for a minute, just how far away from home I am. When Mom was younger, she looked just like me. We share the same nose, the same eyes. My hair is exactly the same colour as hers. We both have rosy cheeks and tanned skin, even though Mom's is pale right now, because it's Winter, and she's not sleeping properly.

I draw another breath, to call out, to talk to her, when she turns around and looks right through me.

I don't belong here. Never have, never will. I will always belong where she is not.

So long and goodnight.