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night. "Don't you ever worry that normal people don't live two lives the way we do?"

I reached across to ruffle his midnight blue hair. "Maybe we're normal and they're not" I said. "Or maybe this is the real world. Maybe the other place is a fantasy."

This made Bob laugh. "Why would we create fantasies where people are cruel? Where everything revolves around money, or the lack of it?"

I shooed away the cat and folded my hands in my lap. "Maybe it's our way of punishing ourselves."

*

I was eventually made redundant from my job. They told me they had to let me go for financial reasons, but in reality I was just too strange for them. I wasn't a team player. Although my redundancy settlement wouldn't stretch very far, I was relieved. I was twenty-seven and had begun to believe I would be an office clerk forever, doomed to live a colourless life of filing, typing and photocopying.

My sister had returned home and reclaimed her half of my room, fresh from a break up with her latest boyfriend. I would find no peace to wander my world while she played music at ear splitting decibels and wept and wailed over her lost love. Instead, I barricaded myself in the garden shed for hours at a time, making myself warm with blankets and a small oil heater. My family thought I was poring over the newspapers, searching for a new job, but I was with Elsa and the others.

It was during this time that the first statue appeared. We all gathered around to stare and wonder at it's immense size. It was colossal, made from hard black granite that shone in the sunlight. It's arms lifted to the sky, graceful as a ballerina; and it's clam, smooth face looked out over us with unseeing oval eyes. As we stood and gaped, our heads craned back to gain a better view, Elsa reached for my hand and squeezed it fiercely in her own.

"I don't like it" she said. "The face looks too real, as if it will come to life."

I laughed. "It's just a statue, Elsa. It won't hurt you."

*

Five more statues appeared over the next fortnight, each more elaborate than the last. We discovered a pair of lovers twisted in a last embrace, hidden amongst the banana palms. Then there were dancers, soldiers standing to attention and figures pressed into yoga poses. The only similarities lay in their hard, placid faces, all chillingly life-like.

It took us a while to realise that every time a statue appeared, one of our friends vanished. At first we thought the statues really could come to life. We fantasised that the ballerina or the soldier

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