The house is asleep, and she meets the girl in blue with a tailored dress, one that she could almost believe was more beautiful than the last. Yet those eyes are still downcast, and that hand still poised above the flowers, cruelly frozen just seconds before they could grasp what they seek. Sunday, she seems to say. A Sunday sunset. She is the girl, for whom Saturday rainclouds are not chains, but invitations to imagine. The sky, she decides, will have dark plumes in the distance, far behind the girl in blue, far behind the church. Are they approaching, the girl in blue asks, or are they retreating even further away? The paint keeps this a secret. Koi-like clouds pulse through the golden stream above the church, fluffed dunes that scatter away from the darkness at the horizon. Electrified, they are the day’s last burst of song before the sun will sleep. Shadows and glints appear on the canvas, carving sky, stone, flesh, and flower, until there is no doubt about what the girl in blue’s eyes are saying – they howl clearly, now – The door opens. “Jesus Christ, you scared me. Can’t you knock?” “I, I’m sorry. I did knock…” “I didn’t hear you.” “I knocked three times over five minutes. I thought that maybe you were asleep, or maybe you weren’t home, or, I don’t know I suppose.” “I’m busy right now.” Her mother is silent for a second. “…why don’t you ever want to talk to me, Sara?” “I do, I’ve just got a lot of things on my mind right now.” A glimmering strike of lightning crawls down the woman’s cheek unnoticed. “Look, can you just go for a bit – ” The woman knows that she can’t let go. She won’t lose all she has left. “Can’t you even look at me? …Can’t you see that I need you?” These words break the woman – and as the girl turns to look into her eyes for the first time, as the brush lowers, there is nothing left for her but to let every anger, every silence and every wrong collapse upon the last person in the room. “That’s not me, Sara, that’s not me!” Her hand batters the girl in blue. “I need you. I don’t have, I don’t… I don’t have anything, anyone else.” “Mum…” “So you can say it, can you? I… I. I don’t know who this is, Sara. Why does she matter more than me?” Whump, whump, whump, goes her hand against the canvas, and the drying sky dribbles, like a final, sputtering cough before the cheap cloth tears. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, sorry –” she tries to push the hanging fabric back up into place, but it flails and lolls until a piece falls off entirely. “Oh… oh…” The woman is gone again, and the girl is silent. They are both far, far away. A draught flurries through the room. And the girl in Sunday blue flutters, leaf-like, through the open window.