I haven’t had time to think of a suitable story about my injuries, so have to make one up on the spot.

‘I was trying to get a beer from the shed and slipped. I smashed a bottle and it went through my hand.’

Mum is too sympathetic. Perhaps she didn’t hear that I was hunting booze. Or maybe it’s because of this, or because she wasn’t at home but off somewhere with Mr Walters again. She doesn’t even tell me off for not calling her, but demands to look, unwrapping me carefully.

The bleeding has stopped, but both cuts are very deep and seem to scream from my hand like open mouths. When I clench my fist as Mum asks, the deeper one starts to ooze again. Mum gets another bandage from under the stairs.

‘Right, in the car. You need stitches.’

I don’t argue.

I feel Mum’s eyes on me from time to time as we drive to the hospital. I slip in and out of a kind of sleep where my eyes are open, or where my eyes are closed but I can hear everything that’s going on; the groan of the engine, the swish of other cars passing by, the happy voice of the radio DJ. That word: responsible.

It’s not a long wait in A&E, and the doctor is quite impressed by how clean the cuts are, and how deep, and by how little I seem to be phased by the four numbing injections and the ten stitches – six in the thumb, four in the knuckle – that go towards sealing up my shredded hand.

Back in the car, it feels like my hand is floating – detached from my body. It feels like someone else’s hand.

*

It’s when we get home that the questions start. Mum makes two cups of tea and ushers me into the lounge. She even opens a packet of biscuits as a sign, maybe, that she is not a threat.

‘How does it feel?’ She starts gently, not probing too much.

There’s a huge part of me that just wants to spill my guts; to tell her everything that’s happened in the past few months and to declare, once and for all, that I’m not coping. I don’t want to be responsible. I want to make this all someone else’s problem, and be told what to do.

But I don’t. Instead, I say, ‘It’s OK.’

A silence follows. I take a biscuit, pinching it gently between the bound fingers of my right hand.

‘Can you tell me what’s going on please, Josh?’ Mum’s voice is starting to quiver already. ‘First it was that bruise on your face … I know you said you fell up the stairs, and I believe you … but I’m trying to find a place where this all started. Are you getting bullied at school?’

‘No, Mum.’