Thoughts scramble to form an orderly queue in Lily’s head. She wonders whether her mum has forgotten or whether she is too upset to remember the rules that Lily has heard her parents discuss so many times over the past few days: When did you last give her some medicine? Remember, she’s not allowed more than one syringe of morphine an hour. She feels an urge to call out but the words stick in her throat and she realizes she does not know what she wants to say.

Lily watches in silence as her mum finishes dispensing the second batch of medicine and then administers a third. Her heart is hammering, her lungs tight with the limited supply of oxygen, but still she says nothing as her mum reaches for the bottle, again and again, giving Zoe more and more medicine, until she is holding the bottle almost upside down to fill the syringe with the last of the morphine.

Lily’s skin prickles, her eyes straining in the semidarkness. Her brain scrabbles to find possible—better—solutions to the shadowy thoughts creeping through her mind, but however much she tries to settle on a different narrative, the same dark story rises up through the gloom.

Still Lily does not move as her mum gets into bed beside Zoe, wraps an arm around her, and holds on to her tightly. Her mum is still crying but she begins to sing through her tears and the sound is like nothing Lily has ever heard before: a sound so sad Lily knows she will remember it for as long as she lives. She tries to swallow her grief but instead tastes something bitter and metallic on her tongue and she knows it is the taste of fear.

She cannot stay in there any longer. She cannot stay because she knows—the truth of it clenching her heart in its fist—that what she has witnessed is all her fault. Her own words of eleven days ago come back to haunt her, echoing in her ears like a child’s playground taunt: It’s inhumane. For goodness’ sake, people do more for sick pets than they do for people. There must be something we can do. Please, Mum. Please stop it. You have to.

Lily backs silently out of the room and onto the landing, closing the door quietly behind her. Her heart is still thundering in her chest, her cheeks hot, the air slowly—finally—escaping from her lungs. She feels tears in her eyes and she blinks them away because she knows that if they begin to fall there will be no way of stopping them.

“What are you doing?”

Lily jumps around, startled, the silent terror of the last few minutes shattered by the sight of Jess, at the top of the stairs, staring at her.

There follows a stand-off between them, Jess demanding to go in and see Zoe, Lily knowing that she has to do everything in her power to stop her.

The alarm on Lily’s digital watch beeps and she jerks her hand to turn it off, frantic that her mum shouldn’t hear, that she shouldn’t know she and Jess are loitering outside.