Valerie had sent Lissa home for the day—which was anxiety-creating enough in itself—and Lissa found the crowds on Tottenham Court Road rather overwhelming. She stumbled over the vast, polluted Euston Road, escaping the honking into the relative quiet of Regent’s Park. It was too warm for this early in the spring. It should have felt good, the sunshine, but it didn’t: it felt ominous and scary, as if the world were shifting and changing beneath her feet. Every teenage boy she passed, every loud laugh he made, shoving around with his mates, crowding her off the pavement, playing his music too loud—every single one made her flinch, made her want to grab him, hard, shout at him in his face to be safe, to keep safe, to stay indoors, to not draw attention to himself.

But they were teenage boys. It was part of their makeup to yell, to beef, to get into each other’s faces. They felt invincible. Indeed, their towering size, their massive trainers; they looked invincible.

But they were as fragile as day-old lambs.

Lissa hurried on. She could feel her breathing speeding up again, her heart pounding in her chest, and tried to calm herself down. She sat near a bright wave of daffodils, concentrated on breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth as much as she could, in and out, slowly and not rushing, trying to get her equilibrium back, even as she wanted to scream, to scream to everyone: The world isn’t safe. It isn’t safe.

She swallowed hard. Maybe Valerie and Juan were right. She couldn’t work like this, couldn’t think like this. But it would pass, wouldn’t it? Would it?

She took out the leaflet they had given her. With its soothing view of rolling hills, it looked more like a funeral-planning leaflet. Oh God. The funeral. She couldn’t bear it. If she felt this bad, what on earth was life like now for his mother? How did you go on? How could anybody go on?

She turned open the leaflet.

Chapter 16

Jake and Cormac went to have a pint in the pub, nodding hello to Eck and Wullie and petting the cheerful sheepdog who lived there and who appeared in perfect and glossy health despite living on a major dietary supplement of beer nuts and pickled onion crisps. It was a chilly evening, but the sun had come down purple in the sky, which was a pretty sight to render anyone more or less cheerful about the world. They’d even persuaded their friend Lennox in for half an hour, although it would literally be half an hour, and he’d be glancing at his watch for half of it. He had a wee lad at home and wouldn’t miss bath time for the world.

Jake was staring at Cormac, aghast.