Prologue

You know if someone loses the use of their legs, their arms become stronger. Blind people can hear better, feel more, taste more. Without the use of one sense, all the others are enhanced to make up for it. If you’re on your own in the black of night, your senses are heightened, you hear things better: your sight is impaired, so all your other senses become superior.

I have found that looking and seeing are totally different things.

Being a watcher, being silent, is much better than being a talker. Talkers are so busy moving their mouths they don’t notice the world around them. A watcher looks, and actually sees. A talker may see a small girl wearing pink flip-flops walking down the pavement; a watcher would note the back of those same flip-flops are worn down: the little girl drags her feet, she has no posture, and the pink colour of those two-pounds-from-primark shoes is the only happy thing about her.

My name is Karina and I haven’t spoken to anyone, not even myself, in years, and as a result I know a lot.

Too much, as it turned out.