This is my family, Will thinks. And for the first time, on this desperate morning, he dares to acknowledge the fear he’s never entirely free of these days but that right now feels like a living, breathing, fat thing inside his guts. Without her, he only has them. And his father, of course, but that fact offers little comfort. Will knows what a family tree looks like on paper, but the connections don’t really work like that – not in this family anyway, not for him. Even now, struggling for breath, barely able to speak, skin grey and hollow, Nain is the centre of everything. This family isn’t joined by sideways and descending branches. Its bonds are like the spokes of a wheel, reaching out and tethering each one of them, Nain at the centre: the hub, the one thing holding everything together.

‘Be lovely if you were to come back in an hour or so,’ a voice says. ‘But if you wouldn’t mind just now …’

Will looks up to see a staff nurse and a porter standing in the doorway. He and Danny step clear of the bed. The process of disconnecting various wires and tubes from a console on the wall begins.

The nurse speaks quietly to Will’s mum. ‘It sounds a bit dramatic, I know,’ she’s saying, ‘but it’s a safe enough procedure.’

Will’s ears prick up at the word enough.

‘She’ll be awake throughout, more or less. Doctor’s hopeful we can avoid anything more invasive if all goes to plan.’

What plan? What if it doesn’t?

The brakes are released and Nain’s bed is swung round. His mum and Danny are already at the door. Standing in the now empty room, Will makes eye contact with Nain. He swears there’s a second of panic, a bulging in her eyeballs over the rim of the oxygen mask in lieu of a scream for help. But it vanishes as Will blows her a kiss.

Maybe she’s calm now, or maybe all her strength is in use to not worry him – it’s difficult to tell which.

Her hand rises a few centimetres from the mattress and she gives a queenly wave. She is whisked past them along the corridor and into a waiting lift.

Killing Time

The bright coolness of the morning seems exaggerated after the claustrophobic warmth of the main building. Only now, as the automatic doors seal behind him, does Will allow himself to really breathe. He dodges a slow-moving ambulance and a racing cab as he darts across the service road that joins the hospital’s many different buildings.

Maybe I’d know.

The thought strikes him at the same instant as the low sun catches him in the eye.

Would I know?

If something bad was going to happen, and it didn’t have to. If there was something that could be done; something to avert the disaster.