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Chapters (59)
  1. Bad Friends
  2. Copyright
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. AFTER: DECEMBER
  6. BEFORE: JUNE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-One
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  36. Chapter Thirty
  37. Chapter Thirty-One
  38. Chapter Thirty-Two
  39. Chapter Thirty-Three
  40. Chapter Thirty-Four
  41. Chapter Thirty-Five
  42. Chapter Thirty-Six
  43. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  44. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  45. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  46. Chapter Forty
  47. Chapter Forty-One
  48. Chapter Forty-Two
  49. Chapter Forty-Three
  50. Chapter Forty-Four
  51. Chapter Forty-Five
  52. Chapter Forty-Six
  53. Chapter Forty-Seven
  54. Chapter Forty-Eight
  55. A CONVERSATION WITH CLAIRE SEEBER
  56. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  57. About the Author
  58. By the same author:
  59. About the Publisher

‘And you’d better be at the party, okay?’

Hannah skipped up, her fairy wings iridescent in the candlelight. ‘Why are you crying, sillies?’ She observed me steadily. ‘You look like a panda, Auntie Maggie. Like what I saw in the zoo when Johnno took me. The fat one that was scratching her bottom.’ She slipped her hand in mine. ‘Don’t cry.’

‘I’m not. I’m laughing. I never cry.’

‘Why’s water coming out of your eyes then?’

‘Oh, Hannah.’ I picked her up and gave her a squeeze. She smelled of biscuits and fresh laundry. ‘You don’t half ask a lot of questions for someone so small.’

Then I went home to my father’s house, alone. The phone was ringing as I unlocked the door, but by the time I reached it they’d rung off. And as my dad had gone to collect his girlfriend Jenny from the airport, I opened a bottle from his trusty Wine Club collection and drank myself to sleep.

Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

BEFORE: JUNE

I had dreamed that I was dying, such a very vivid dream. When I woke, I wasn’t absolutely sure I hadn’t. A huge weight squatted on my stomach, face pulled back in a rictus grin, gurning down at me until, panicking, I pushed up through its mass. Rearing from the bed, my arms flailed like a sprinter’s tangled in the finish line; a great sob of terror scraping through my chest.

I wasn’t dead, apparently. Not unless heaven was an ice-cream-coloured curtain drawn round a narrow bed, or a glimpse of rain through a small window in a quietly rumbling room. A room that was grey and regular. A dormitory. A ward. Not unless the woman in blue with smiley eyes who stepped neatly to my side was some bizarre kind of angel in a nurse’s uniform.

‘You haven’t got a halo.’ I blinked at the nurse. ‘Have you?’

The woman leaned forward to hear me properly, but my voice was apparently stuck in my sore and tired throat. I tried to smile instead, but smiling seemed to hurt me even more. Tentatively I brought my hand up to touch my own face, my hand that felt freezing.

‘Your lip’s been stitched.’

She caught my hand and moved it gently down. The nurse’s skin was beautiful, dark and creamy like a pint of newly pulled Guinness. I had the impulse to stroke her arm, but before I could she tucked my hand beneath the sheet. And I winced at the touch. My body ached; I was realising slowly that every part of me was tender, every part felt bruised and sore.

‘Only a few stitches, though.’