The Broken Mirror

rom here, you could soon reach the rubbish dump. In the distance there rose a modest, grassy hill, dotted with rocks and heather, where Claire’s parents would sometimes take her for walks on Sunday afternoons. There was a fantastic view of the whole town from the top. But before you got very far along the path towards this hill, there was a clump of dense, stubbly bushes on the left, and once you had pushed your way through those, the ground fell away at your feet into a sheer slope, like the edge of a cliff. But if you trod carefully, you could scramble down the slope – clutching for support onto the weeds which sprung out of the chalky soil – and that was how you got to the dump.

Claire looked again into the mirror lying in the palm of her hand. The same pale, freckly face looked back at her. And behind it was the same blue, cloudless sky. And then she saw something fly through the sky, directly behind her head. It was a huge bird – flying so close above her that she could see the soft texture of its feathers and the beady gleam of its fast, searching eye; so close above her that in an involuntary movement she ducked and covered her head with one arm, afraid that the bird was going to fly into her

try as she might, she could not see it anywhere in the lowering, cloudy sky.