I didn’t make it to school the next morning. When I woke sometime after nine to a bedroom that felt like a furnace, I found two welcome glasses of water on my bedside table together with a blister pack of hospital ibuprofen. And a note. She’d drawn an impressively accurate self-portrait in biro, coloured in with green highlighter.

It’s f-ing six in the morning. Due on the ward in an hour. Will try not to kill anyone. Thanks for the wicked night out. Can’t wait for summer.

Love you.

K x

I wish I still had that note.

7.55 a.m.

A sheen of sweat clings to my neck and soaks the collar of my shirt. The air is dense, syrupy, as I will my breath into a rhythm that can lock into my walk. My cheeks pulse with crimson heat. Primary-school kids, mums with buggies, commuters in suits, they all do a double take as I pass. They surely know from my glowing face, the nervousness I’m powerless to conceal, that I’m carrying something I shouldn’t be. I try to relax my white-fingered grip on the shoulder strap, but I’m certain that, as soon as I do, someone will barge into me or wrench it away.

I’ve imagined this final walk to school so many times. In the foolishness of my fantasies, I’ve almost floated over the pavement, free of the fear that has crushed me for so long, euphoric that this day has finally come. But, now I’m here, these streets look no different from any other day, and they’re no safer. I can think about nothing other than speeding this package to its destination a mile away, somehow staying clear of trouble. I feel like I’ve been blindfolded, with primed fists surrounding me – not knowing when to duck, where to block.

The sun is blazing, just as I imagined it would be, but this twenty-three-degree heat and rising brings no promise of summer. It serves only to heighten the oppression. An impromptu downpour would be so much more appropriate, an opening of the heavens into which I could disappear.

I allowed myself no poignant goodbye with Gramps. He kissed me on the forehead as he always has, handed me a foil package of cheese and pickle sandwiches as he always does, and I walked. It may seem heartless, but I’ve cried my tears for leaving him days and weeks ago. Actually doing it was easy. Easier than I expected. If my life was a film, I’d probably have written a letter for him to find and read and cry over, beginning with some massive cliché like, ‘By the time you read this, I’ll be gone.’ But this is real life, and I wouldn’t know the words.