ne week on from that morning and Elizabeth found herself moping around the house in her pajamas, dragging her slipper-clad feet from room to room early on a Sunday. She stood at the doorway of each room, gazed inside, and searched for... something, although she didn't quite know what for. None of these rooms offered her any solution and so she wandered on. Warming her hands on a mug of coffee, she stood still in the hallway trying to decide what to do. She didn't usually move so slowly and her mind had never felt so clouded before, but she was a lot of things now that she never used to be.

It wasn't as though she didn't have things to do; the house was due its daily scrub from top to bottom and there was still the problem of the children's room in the hotel to be completed. Never mind completing it, it wasn't even started. She was a talented professional woman, but this month she had felt like a schoolgirl again, ignoring her pencils and pens and avoiding her laptop so she didn't have to do her homework. She was looking for a distraction, a decent excuse to, for once, drag her out of the mindless block she had found herself in. Vincent and Benjamin had been on her back all week, she was losing even more sleep than usual because she had simply no idea what to do and, being the perfectionist, she couldn't begin it unless it was completely clear in her mind. To pass this on to Poppy would be a failure on her part.

She hadn't seen Ivan since her party last week; she hadn't received a phone call, a letter, nothing. It was as though he had disappeared off the face of the earth and as well as being angry, she felt lonely. She missed him.

It was seven o'clock in the morning and the playroom was alive with the sounds of cartoons. Elizabeth made her way down the hall and popped her head into the room.

"Mind if I join you?" I promise I won't say anything, she felt like saying.

Luke look surprised but shook his head. He sat on the floor, straining his neck up to see the television. It looked uncomfortable, but she chose silence instead of criticizing him. She collapsed on the beanbag beside him and tucked her legs close to her body.

"What are you watching?"

"SpongeBob SquarePants."

"Sponge what?!" She laughed.

"SpongeBob SquarePants," he repeated, not taking his eyes away from the television.

"What's it about?"

"A sponge called Bob who wears square pants." He giggled. "Any good?"

"Mmm-hmm." He nodded. "Seen it before twice though." He spooned more Rice Krispies into his mouth messily, spilling milk down his chin.

"Why are you watching it again, why don't you go out into the fresh air and play with Sam? You've been inside all weekend."

She was greeted with silence.

"Actually, where is Sam, is he away?"

"We're not friends anymore," he said sadly.

"Why not?" she asked in surprise, sitting up and placing her coffee cup on the floor.

Luke shrugged.

"Did you have a fight?" Elizabeth asked gently. Luke shook his head.

"Did he say something to make you sad?" she probed. He shook his head again. "Did you make him mad?"

Another shake of the head. "Well, what happened?"

"Nothing," Luke explained. "He just told me one day he didn't want to be my friend anymore."

"Well, that's not very nice," Elizabeth said gently. "Do you want me to talk to him for you, see what's wrong?"

Luke shrugged. There was a silence between them as he continued staring at the screen, lost in thought.

"You know, I know what it's like to miss a friend, Luke. You know my friend Ivan?"

"He was my friend too."

"Yes." She smiled. "Well, I miss him. I haven't seen him all week either."

"Yeah, he's gone now. He told me so; he has to help someone else now."

Elizabeth's eyes widened and anger welled inside her. He hadn't even the decency to say goodbye to her. "When did he say goodbye to you? What did he say?" At the startled look on Luke's face, she immediately stopped firing questions so aggressively. She needed to keep reminding herself that he was only six.

"He said goodbye to me the same day as he said goodbye to you." His voice went up a pitch, as though she were crazy. His face crumpled up and he looked at her as though she had ten heads, and if she weren't so confused she would have laughed at the sight of him.

But inside she wasn't laughing. She paused and thought for a moment and then exploded. "What?! What are you talking about?"

"After the party in the garden, he came to the house and he told me that his job with us was finished, that he was going to be invisible again like he used to be but he would still be around and that meant that we were OK," he spoke chirpily, turning his attention back to the television.

"Invisible." Elizabeth said the word like it had a bad taste.

"Yep," he chirped. "Well, people don't call him imaginary for no reason, doh!" He hit himself on the head and fell over onto the floor.

"What is he putting into your head?" she grumbled angrily, wondering if she'd been wrong to introduce a person like Ivan into Luke's life. "When is he coming back?"

Luke lowered the volume on the TV and turned to her with that crazy look on his face again. "He's not. He told you that already." "He didn't." Her voice failed her. "He did. I heard him talking in your room."

Elizabeth cast her mind back to that night and to the dream she had, the dream she had been thinking about all week, the dream that had been bothering her, and suddenly realized with a sinking feeling in her heart that it hadn't been a dream at all.

She had lost him. In her dreams and in real life, she had lost Ivan.