We all meander together to the main doors. There are handshakes and hugs. Shaun and I make plans to meet up after Christmas. With a nod from Dr Gale, a buzzer sounds and the inner doors click unlocked. They latch behind us as we wait in the foyer. Another buzz, another click. The freezing night air wraps round my skin. I close my eyes and breathe it in through my nose. It smells of freedom.

And Home

A drizzle has started to fall as we edge through the traffic along the high street. Gramps and I are half an hour into the journey, but we’re yet to speak. Every minute or two, he turns and smiles. I smile back. But the only sounds are the sporadic judder of windscreen wipers, and the bustle of shoppers diving in and out of luridly decorated shops to either side of us.

I tip my head back and look up to the sashes of festive lights that arch over the road. The raindrops across the top of the windscreen sparkle in deep violet and cherry red. My eyes relax, lose their focus. My vision fills with soft overlapping orbs of colour. For a precious second, I see Christmas as a five-year-old. I feel the wonder, the excitement, the magic of it.

‘You all right, lad?’ Gramps asks.

‘I’m really good.’

‘You look comfortable.’

I am comfortable. I’m relaxed. And it feels great. My recovery has been built of small daily triumphs and this is one of them. Some people will be fortunate enough to never know what it’s like to be petrified by something so ordinary. And they wouldn’t understand how just riding in a car without being shit scared of every tiny noise and movement feels like an achievement. But it does and I’m pleased with myself.

‘Can we go and see Mum tomorrow?’ I ask him.

He nods. ‘That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?’

‘You seen much of her?’

‘Every week, lad,’ he says with a smile. ‘Sometimes more. We got out for a pub lunch the other day. Was lovely.’

‘You never used to go every week.’

‘Things are different now,’ Gramps says, watching the road ahead. ‘She’s desperate to see you.’

And I’m desperate to see her. We’ve been a three-hour drive apart for the last seven months, but we’ve been exchanging emails most days. No one understands quite what I’ve been through like she does. And, for the first time, I know exactly why she’s always so scared. But, in nearly every one of her emails, she tells me how guilty she feels, how she blames herself for what’s happened to me. It doesn’t matter what I write back to her. I never manage to persuade her otherwise. I want her to see me, to know I’m well, to know nothing was her fault.