‘Maybe it’s that—’ Will stopped. The need in Lena’s face made him want to flee. He thought of Dad, took a breath, tasted ash. ‘I get stressed a lot about the environment and that, you know? Like really freaked and … I was talking to Mercy about it, about how fucked up it is that the planet is dying and nobody seems to know what to do to fix it, and—’

‘Will, understand I do not want a lecture about fucking climate change right now.’

‘I’m not talking about climate change, just this thing Mercy said. That the scariest thing isn’t that the planet is dying and we don’t know how to fix it. We do know, actually. How to slow it down, or make it less terrible anyway. The scariest thing is that so many people don’t give a fuck that it’s dying because giving a fuck means they might have to give some shit up, and being less comfortable in the short term is a worse prospect to them than a dead planet in the long term. Or middle term, even.’

Lena had been thumbing her phone while he was talking but she was obviously listening because she said. ‘The planet’s going to be fine, though.’

‘You serious?’

‘Yep. We’re not killing the planet. Just making it uninhabitable for ourselves.’

‘Fucking hell, Lena. Always looking on the bright side, you are.’

She smiled a little at that. Properly. So fast it could have been a tic, but he was pretty sure it was a smile. That he caused in his sister. As wins went it wasn’t huge, but he’d take it.

‘Point is, maybe Aunty Nic hasn’t been, like, deliberately burying herself. It’s just the unfortunate consequence of making herself comfortable.’

‘You’ve seen the pictures when I first got in here. You can’t think that was comfortable.’

‘To her, maybe. Or she’d become so used to it she couldn’t see it anymore. Hey, give us your phone a sec.’

‘Use your own.’

‘I wanna show her the photos you took.’

‘She hates me enough as it is.’

‘What if she’s got some warped idea about how it was? If she sees the, like, objective reality, she might understand what a good thing you’ve done.’

Lena looked at him. ‘You think it was a good thing?’

‘Leen, you probably saved her life and then you made it possible for her to move back home. There’s no question it was a good thing. But it’s a good thing in the way that taking away an addict’s supply is a good thing. In the long run she’ll thank you, but first she’s got to come to terms with how bad things were. The photos will help, I think.’