The Missing Girl

He saw the house before him, the dark green of his childhood, the bright days. The colours smelled of the dust covering everything, they smelled like freshly mown grass in the afternoon and like thyme after rain, and like the reeds between the planks of the landing stage. He thought of the silk dresses that his mother once used to wear, he thought of her skin in the sun and the picture of the Arctic Ocean in his father's study.
He didn't know what was real any longer, and he didn't know what was going to become of him.