The Icarus Girl

Jess’s father leaves the hospital, but he is still very sick. Seeing him move slowly around the house, Jess is sure that “it was TillyTilly. Tilly’s verdant, earthy smell clung to him in clumps, but instead of making him light and fast-moving like she was, it dragged Daniel’s arms, legs and head down, so that he moved more slowly and deliberately than he had before” (273). Jess’s father spends most of his time in bed. Jess tries to talk to her father, but he struggles to speak coherently. Jess gets the impression that “this wasn’t her father at all, it was a thing, slurred of speech, emptied, inside out, outside in, by two girls, one of whom could bring seven years’ bad luck in a razor-edged shatter of a looking glass” (275).

Jess wakes in the middle of the night to see TillyTilly surrounded by Jess’s mother’s tea lights and the portrait of the long-armed woman from the Boys’ Quarters, but the items quickly vanish.

A few days later, Siobhan comes over. Siobhan asks whether she can meet TillyTilly. Jess says that TillyTilly only comes out when she wants to. Jess hears TillyTilly outside the bedroom door.