Jess stared at herself in the mirror and something about her reflection—perhaps the unkempt hair or the smudged makeup, or perhaps just the look of weary uncertainty—caused a shutter to open on a memory she rarely dared view.

Chapter 9

October 1987

Her hand is hot and clammy, squeezed tightly inside her mum’s. They walk briskly, side by side, her mum’s stride too wide for Jess to keep pace with, so that every other step she has to improvise a small half-skip, an unintended jauntiness she knows is inappropriate given the circumstances. Her mum looks down at her and smiles as if to say that everything will be OK and Jess tries to smile back but her attention is focused on the ward three floors above where the two of them are heading, just as they do almost every day after school.

It seems to Jess that they have been coming to the hospital forever even though she knows, really, that it is only a matter of months since these visits began. She can still remember when the time between the end of school and the beginning of dinner was filled with chocolate Nesquik and bourbon biscuits, Hartbeat and The Really Wild Show, games of Connect 4 and Guess Who?, which Jess would invariably have lost had her sister not occasionally let her win.

Now Jess no longer knows which is preferable: to be at home in a house filled with anxiety or to be here, where the collective fear is so great that she sometimes imagines it gobbling her up—head, shoulders, knees, and toes—until there is nothing left.

They hurry along the corridor toward the elevator, Jess unsure whether she wants to rush or not. She both wants to be there and yet wishes she weren’t. It is a familiar feeling but one she still hasn’t got used to: the wanting and not wanting at the same time.

The smell clings to the hairs in Jess’s nose, a smell of counterfeit healthiness. Jess knows it to be a sham. There is no healthiness here. This is where people come when they are really sick. This is where some people come to die.

The thought knocks inside Jess’s head, trying to get out, but she knows there is no escape.

They wait for the elevator to arrive, Jess watching the illuminated digits signal its slow descent. She glances up at her mum, who smiles at her again, the pad of her thumb running along the back of Jess’s hand. Jess senses her mum’s need to reassure her but can’t decide whether it makes her feel better or worse.

The elevator doors open and Jess catches sight of them both in the mirror on the far wall. There are dark rings under her mum’s eyes and strands of hair sticking out from Jess’s two plaits: they look to Jess like a messy version of the people they once were, before this all began.

The elevator ascends and when the doors open at the third floor they are greeted by the sound of “Never Gonna Give You Up” drifting from the nurses’ station along the corridor. The tune attaches itself to Jess’s ears and she knows she will be unable to shake Rick Astley’s voice from her head for the rest of the day.