Little pins of light start swirling behind my eyes and I fear that I’m going to faint again. When I sway backwards Marius grabs my arm and takes me back to the waiting room, he gets me a Fat Coke from the vending machine and I throw caution and my fillings to the wind and drink the lot. When I’ve chugged it back, he hands me a chocolate bar without a word and I scoff that too, ashamed that I’m supposed to be looking after him not vice versa. He hugs me when he sees that I feel bad again; he’s such a beautiful boy. You’re a diamond, you know that, Ma? I’m glad of his arm around my shoulders when the nurse tells us we’ve had our lot for the day; John won’t be woken up again until tomorrow.

Marius and Eugene decide to stay up in the city for a couple of days to see how things pan out and Shane, Daniel and me go home: Johns Farm must be tended. Serena has to be told now, so she and my Auntie Eileen are first on my list of people to call after I ride the gauntlet of getting past my mother. My brain is a pea rolling on a plate but my feet keep moving because I’m concentrating on putting one of them in front of the other – to get the bus home, to get off the bus, to walk the mile to The Hill, to walk the other two miles to Johns Farm.

I’ll be fine as soon as I get to my kitchen, get to the auld yellow range, get the fire up to boil the kettle, get a mug of tea to take out to the stoop and surely soon the hole in my chest will start to fill up? I am back before I know what’s hit me and facing down another night at Johns Farm without him.

Serena is inconsolable. She cries and cries and the sound of it scours my brain. She wants to come home straight away and, much as I’d love to have her beside me, she’d undo me totally. I need all the energy I have to stop myself from falling to pieces. Auntie Eileen is quiet. I hear the smoke being blown slowly out of her mouth as I relay the news. I’ll be there tomorrow, she says, sit tight.