‘You don’t have cancer. You might never have cancer.’ And ‘You can’t cut yourself into little pieces. It’s insane.’ And ‘This is grief – it’s guilt and grief.’ That particular argument came after a pretty intense counselling session in which Grace admitted she felt guilty about Rabbit’s death. She felt guilty because she hadn’t been there for Rabbit when she needed her just after her diagnosis. Grace’s fear of hospitals, blood and needles meant she was slow to jump on board, but she did and it was hard because Rabbit’s life had become nothing but hospitals, blood and needles. She tried her best but she still felt guilty when she couldn’t help dress a wound or when she turned her face having caught a glimpse of her sister’s sick, twisted, raw, scarred, battered, bruised and bloody body. She felt guilty because she was alive and her younger sister was dead and she was glad that she was alive. She didn’t want to die. ‘You’re not dying!’ Lenny shouted in the car after the session, but the bomb was ticking so loudly it was hard to hear him. He couldn’t hear it. Maybe he didn’t want to. She felt petrified and so very, very sad. The best thing about having the test done was that she was in the system, they were watching her; there was a disposal team on standby. For some that would be good enough, but not for Grace – she couldn’t sleep, think straight, laugh or even smile. I have the gene. Of course she was grieving, but more than missing her sister, worrying about her parents, Juliet and Davey, and more than the guilt she carried around like luggage, it was the ever-present inescapable loud tick-tock of the bomb that lay within that destroyed her confidence and stole her peace of mind. Of course she didn’t want to cut pieces of herself away; she was terrified and horrified and sickened and, worse than all of that, she was utterly and completely alone.