I watched her sitting there, so alone. For a moment, she looked like a little girl. Lost and lonely and helpless. I took a step towards her.

Her head snapped up and she glared at me. ‘I said go.’

With a lump in my throat, I tried to walk normally out of the room and mount the stairs at a steady pace. As soon as my foot touched the landing carpet, I hurled myself into my bedroom and shut the door. My hands shook slightly as I withdrew the page from my dress. I sat down at my desk, slid my textbook out of the way and laid the page out on the desktop, flattening and smoothing out the creases best I could. Solar Urticaria. It sounded more like a planet or a star than a rare medical condition. Rare. That word again. It didn’t say how rare – like one in a hundred or one in a thousand – just rare. But how rare was rare?

I re-read the symptoms and flashed back to that moment on the stairs. When I had seen the light, a headache had come then I’d thrown up. Those were two of the symptoms of SU. But … I read the passage carefully. It was only if light touched you that symptoms developed. You didn’t get headaches and sickness from simply seeing the light. Hang on – yes you did – sometimes even visible light causes a case of hives that can appear in both covered and uncovered areas of the skin. Did I get hives? What were hives? I guessed hives were some kind of rash. Yes. That made sense. But I hadn’t been aware of a rash on my skin. There could have been one, but I was too busy throwing up at the time to notice any weird patches on my body.

Why would Mother lie?

The question made me look up from the page. I winced with guilt.

Read the article again. Think about the dress.

No.

Yes, yes, yes!

Suddenly I knew what I had to do. My heart pounded. You’re going to die soon anyway, so you might as well.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I turned on my lamp and held my hand directly under the bulb – not close enough for the heat of the bulb to burn as it would burn anyone, just close enough to see if my skin would react oddly. The light illuminated my hand, making it look a sicky, yellow colour. I counted to thirty. Nothing. No redness, no swelling, no burning sensation and definitely no rash. I held my hand there for another thirty seconds. Another thirty. Nothing. No change in my skin at all. No itching or burning or anything.