“Good.” Olivia smiled back, her heart feeling impossibly lighter despite all the challenges still ahead. “That’s all that matters, then.”

“I’m glad you think that,” Bella said seriously, her smile fading. “And I hope you continue to do so.”

A few minutes later Olivia was standing in front of a closed bedroom door, tapping on it gently. “Simon...?” she called. “It’s Olivia.” There was no answer. “Simon...” Uncertainly she pushed the door open, blinking in the gloom. She could make out a shape on the bed—Simon, sitting back against the pillows, his arms folded, his gaze distant, a cup of tea going cold on the table next to him. He didn’t speak.

Olivia stepped into the room, praying she was strong enough for this. She hadn’t known how to handle her mum’s memory lapses, and she wasn’t sure how to handle this situation, either, but she knew she loved her mum and she was falling in love with Simon and surely, surely that was what mattered?

“Simon.” She perched on the edge of the bed, gazing at him in tender concern. He was freshly showered and dressed in a frayed jumper and old cords, looking so wonderfully familiar and yet also so strange, for there was a vacant and desolate look in his usually glinting eyes that made her ache. “Oh, Simon.” She covered his hand with her own, having no idea what to say but simply wanting to be there for him.

“I’m sorry.” He spoke the two words so quietly she almost didn’t hear them.

“You don’t need to be sorry, Simon. Of course you don’t.”

“I...I never wanted you to see me like this.”

Tears pricked Olivia’s eyes. “Good and bad days,” she reminded him softly. “Just like you said.”

“Yes, but...I like me on the good days.” He let out a shuddering breath. “Not like this. Never like this.”

“You were going to have to tell me sometime,” she said quietly. “Weren’t you?”

“I suppose. I hoped...I hoped I wouldn’t have to. It doesn’t...it doesn’t always hit me like this, you know. I can go months...even more...without feeling this way.”

“What happened?” Olivia asked, unsure if that was the right question. “I mean, did something happen? To...set you off?” She was fumbling in the dark; she’d never dealt with depression before, not like this, and she was afraid to use the wrong words, ask the wrong questions.

“No,” Simon said on a sigh. “Nothing did. At least, not that I know of. Sometimes it can be something on a subconscious level: a smell, a sudden memory, anything. And sometimes it’s nothing at all. I just wake up one morning and I feel it coming, like a fog I can see rolling in, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

“And is that what happened this time?”

“Yes, more or less. I was organising the house and then I woke up on the twenty-eighth and I felt as if I could barely get out of bed. As if there was no point in living.”