It was just a month ago, a sunny day in May, the last time I went over to see Grace. I was busy studying for my exams and she begged me to take her to the beach. She wanted to go, just the two of us, but I’d heard how bad her seizures were now, how her eyes rolled and her lungs refused to behave like lungs, how she’d spasm so hard she once fell out of her chair, smashing her front tooth on the pavement. Her epilepsy was harder to manage because of her muscular dystrophy. The seizures would strike without warning, at any time. Meg said she’d come to the beach with us, but Grace wheeled herself back to her room, mumbling “Don’t bother” over her shoulder. When I told Mum later, she reminded me Grace was still a teenager, prone to testiness like anyone else, despite being sick.

“So you grew up seeing Grace’s health struggles?” Upton is looking at me, but Mum answers yet again.

“Oh, Cara was brilliant with Grace when she was little, she’d even help Meg with her medication, remember, Car? That was when you said you were going to be a doctor.”

I don’t remember that, but I do remember a few years ago, the summer before Grace’s thirteenth birthday, waiting, nervous, in the hall while Meg went into Grace’s room to see if she was awake. Grace had just had a huge seizure and Meg said she was still groggy. It was August, the sun blistered, I was in flip-flops and had my swimming costume on under my shorts, ready to rejoin Chris and his mates for flirting and cheap booze on the beach. The coconut oil I’d slathered all over my skin curdled in the humid air of number 52; I wanted to get out of there, but then I heard Grace crying so I pushed the door open a couple of inches. Meg was sitting on Grace’s bed, her back to the door. The curtains were drawn, summer and all its energy pulsed just behind the thin orange fabric like a heart. An ice-cream van chimed outside, jarring with Grace’s warm room, tangy with sweat and vomit. Meg turned briefly, a small, sad smile on her lips as she tilted her arms so Grace and I could see each other. Grace’s eyes were open, they flicked towards me briefly, but her body looked floppy in Meg’s arms, wasted and strangely without form, like all her bones had withered away. I realized she wasn’t crying, her face was dry, but she let out a whimper, raw and desperate. I felt embarrassed, she sounded so animal. It felt impossible she could be wasting away in this stifling room when half an hour earlier my legs had been wrapped around Chris’s waist in the sea, his stubble grazing my face. Grace’s pain felt so abstract, I couldn’t comprehend it and, being there in her room, I realized my life would be easier if I didn’t try. Meg, sensing my alarm, stroked Grace’s damp hair off her forehead, rocked her broken daughter gently in her arms, and spoke softly.