Excerpt from Our Numbered Bones by Katya Balen, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter One

YESTERDAY I WANDERED THE ENDLESS AISLES IN the Surrey Quays Decathlon and I pretended to be someone else. I folded away the last few months and what I should have been doing and what I should have been buying. I focused on the bright bones of my knuckles as I gripped the trolley. I thought about what sort of person would buy walking gear. Someone who touches the tips of flowers and feels the softness of their petals. Someone who feels a connection to the whole world and marvels at the beauty of a snowflake. That person. I stood under the strip lighting and I closed my eyes and I tried to think about finding joy walking through a meadow or a wood or up a mountain. The hollow thump of basketballs skidding from a rack pulled me back to South London. I'd barely been able to imagine the shape of a tree.

I added thermal layers and waterproofs. They lay in the trolley like oily streaks. Shiny puddles. I couldn't afford them. I didn't even need them. But I wanted them. I wanted to shrug off the city and slip into someone else, someone far away. I added socks with gel padding and a coat that folds into your pocket and a plastic compass with a string for round your neck even though I didn't even know what it would mean if I was lost and knew which way was north. How does that even help? Someone better than me would know. I was already useless at stepping into this new life. I should have been better at make-believe.

I piled everything into my trolley and I bought the second cheapest walking boots because someone once told me you should never buy the cheapest. Just go one up. I think they might have been talking about wine. It didn't matter. It doesn't matter.

The total at the till was an electric shock. I fumbled for the right card and the woman asked if I was a hiker and I said yes because a lie is always easier now and it could become the truth. She added some glucose tablets for free and it made me cry and she looked like she wished she'd never said a word to me. She beeped the rest of the stuff through and kept her eyes on the red laser lines of her scanner. She was worried I was going to tell her everything. A stranger spilling her guts on the shiny wipe-clean floor. It's alright, I wanted to say. I don't want to talk about it. I don't ever want to talk about it.

I stopped crying as soon as I got on the bus. London is too brittle and busy for that kind of thing. There was too much going on. Bags banging my ankles. Buggies jammed tight together in the wheelchair space. The city pressing against the windows. The hard shell of the bus hurtling me home for the last time in forever. My feelings back in their box.

Oh the box.

The box the box the box.

* * *

I leave today. My bag isn't packed. My train leaves in ninety minutes. The logic of timings and packing and planning escapes me. I am frozen. Staring at the ripples of waterproofs streaking the bed. I am sure I used to be able to do stuff like this. Get myself together. I am unraveling quietly. I don't want to make a fuss.

The cat jumps down from the top of the wardrobe. The thud of paws snaps me into something approximating action. Muscle memory. I fold up the strange slippery unfamiliar fabrics and I shove them into my wheeled cabin bag and I wish I'd bought a holdall too. Who puts waterproof trousers into a bright red carry-on. It doesn't work. It doesn't fit together. There's not enough space after I've added all the walking stuff and I have to get JP's canvas shopping bags and stuff them with underwear and books and chargers and it's all a mess. Fine. I empty my bedside drawer of moisturizers and serums and eye creams because maybe this is the time to start using them. Escape to the country. Start a skin-care regime. Fix it all with open fields and a really good night balm.

My fingers pause inside the drawer. I let them touch the edge of the box. So small. But still somehow bigger than I'd thought it would be though. Heavy. The weight of it all crushed to powder and ash and despair. Now pushed into the blackness. It's electric. I brush the sides again. I think about pulling it toward me. Holding it in the palm of my hand. Feeling it heavy on my bones. Wrapping it in a scarf and slipping it into the suitcase. Taking it with me. Everywhere.

Excerpted from Our Numbered Bones by Katya Balen. Copyright © 2026 by Katya Balen. Excerpted by permission of HarperVia. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.