Losing Focus

There were times, moments, when Jess saw the world slip, stutter and lose focus. Times when it seemed as though the edges of the things that defined the world around her seemed to shift as though slipping out of and then coming back into focus. It felt to her as though, if she didn’t keep an eye on, keep a watch over, this world, then it could easily slip away from her and become something completely different, something new and alien.

She’d already noticed it with people, how they seemed to slip, to change between certain characters, as though they all had a different face for different circumstances. She knew that if you watched someone carefully, especially when they thought no-one else was watching them, then they would slip into being someone else. They may still look the same, at least superficially, but she knew they had changed into someone else. There was the way Mrs Peters from down the road changed when she knew she was about to get a visit from the man who drove the green Ford, who turned up every couple of weeks on Wednesday mornings.

Jess had seen just how different Mrs Peters could be, from the lady who arranged flowers down at the church, when the man with the green Ford took her up into the bedroom that Jess could see right into, from her secret hiding place in the old tree high on the hill behind the village.