As I walk closer, I know it’s his grave. It’s on its own, adrift from the others, looking strangely lonely, cast out. As I walk towards it, I feel an uncomfortable pressure in my back, a prickle like I’m being watched by hundreds of silent eyes. The rain falls harder now but I don’t stop. My feet slip about in my flip-flops, mud bubbles between my toes. The rain sounds like thunder in my ears, hits my eyes like tiny wet darts, and the gulls scream. I keep my head down as I walk. It’s only when I’m close that I look up, and that’s when I see them. A person is kneeling just to the side of Danny’s stone. They’re being careful not to put any weight on his tiny grave, as though worried they might hurt him. A small hand, mucky with earth, strokes the curve of the headstone. They’re wearing a too-big man’s raincoat. I stop still, but my mind cartwheels. They’re distracted, running their hands back through the earth and whispering to Danny, so they don’t see me for a few seconds, until they feel me staring and their eyes snap up to mine. In the second our eyes lock the world I thought I knew disappears forever because I know those eyes. I’ve seen them laugh and I’ve seen them raw with tears and pain. Grace. She stands, her mouth becomes a snarl. She is Grace, but she’s also not Grace. She’s not afraid of me; she doesn’t even seem to recognize me. Her eyes are hard. The rain slices the distance between us and, with a shake of her head, the girl they said would never walk turns and runs away.

15th December 2018

David from the Wishmakers sent the charity’s minivan to pick us up from the hospital and take us home. I watched the driver while Mum stared out of the window. Mum thinks David blames himself for introducing us to Jon Katrin, that everything that’s happened since is his fault. I heard Mum talking to Lola about it on the ward as she gathered up all our Christmas cards from our friends at the hospital.

“David’s even looking into allotting some of their fundraising money to getting us our own car, big enough for the wheelchair.”

“So he should. Honestly. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t suggested that reporter in the first place.”

Mum went quiet then. I don’t think she blames David, just Jon. Like she said to Dr. Parker after “the incident,” David didn’t force Jon to get drunk and smash up our house. That was all Jon’s doing.

I knew the minivan was coming for us, but the people standing in our sitting room raising steaming plastic cups of mulled wine was a surprise. Everyone we knew from the street and some we didn’t were there. Susie, Zara, Martin, and Sylvia. Someone had hung up a WELCOME HOME MEG AND GRACE banner in the place where our front window used to be, like a pretty eye patch over the hole the journalist made with his golf club. A Christmas tree vibrated with bright fairy lights in the corner by the kitchen, hurting my eyes, and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” was playing too loud. I knew from the way Mum was looking at me that she knew about the party. I felt sick. I wanted to go to bed. But Mum held my hand, squeezed twice: “Don’t worry, I’m here,” her hand told mine.