‘You can have that,’ I said. ‘Yes. And you’ll be able to taste it and swallow it. And we’ll just float around in the clouds, and it won’t matter who’s alive or what year it is because those things will be nothing.’

He lay back and stretched his arms up. I could see that it had stopped raining, for him.

‘The thing is, Ariel,’ he said, with his eyes closed, ‘that’s just as likely as this. And so, if we really want it to, it might as well happen. We might as well live there.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So let’s do it.’

In the absence of cloud-food I ate my sandwich and crisps and drank my Diet Coke, and Joe had his biscuits and juice, not because he wanted or needed them, but to keep me company. We talked all afternoon. He told me that he’d visited Mum on the way and talked to her and Sasha. I was properly happy for the first time in years.

And then, at the end of it, Joe said he didn’t want me to visit him any more.

36

Everything I’ve been doing is wrong. It takes a kiss that can never be a kiss to make me see it. I had the best day of my death: I knew I could get through this as long as I had Ariel. We talked wonderful nonsense about living above Venus, and at some point along the way I realized.

I’m pulling her into my grave. I’ve dragged her into my half-dead existence, away from her real, breathing, messy life. I can’t live, so I’m stopping her from living too.

Her old boyfriend asked her out and she turned him down. ‘I said no, of course.’ She’d said it so casually. I know she likes Jack. They only broke up because her mum got ill and she couldn’t handle anything. Jack would have been good for her if I wasn’t around. Going out with him would be a real step back to normality for her. She likes him, but she didn’t even consider it. That’s the bit that haunts me. She said no, of course. Because of me.

I am toxic. She has to live, but I pull her towards death.

If no one found out what happened to me back then, no one will now. I’ve been selfish, as I always was. I was horrible to Lucas and, in a different way, I’m being awful to Ariel too. I resent her friends, and as long as we’re trying to touch each other and trying, hopelessly, to kiss she will turn down approaches from living boys.

And she has important exams, but here I am, greedily grabbing her attention whenever I can. I can’t see her every day when I’m just fucking up her reality.