‘Your father or not, you are my granddaughter and always will be. Our relationship is separate to him. You are nearly a woman, and we, you and I, will always, always be family.’ She takes my hand, opens it, puts the brooch back on my palm and closes my hand again.

‘Are you sure? Even if … what if I don’t keep in touch with him or something? Even then?’

‘Even then.’

She leans over to kiss me on the cheek. ‘Now tell me what’s happening with Adam,’ she says. ‘I’m happy to try and help.’

‘It’s hard. It’s not that he isn’t nice, or a good guy, because he is. And he’s been really trying. He’s amazing with Jaxon too. But …’

She lifts her eyebrows.

‘I can’t handle it,’ I say. ‘I just can’t. I love animals, always have, always will. I get that it’s a different perspective, just his way of seeing things. But I don’t think it’s a perspective I can … accept.’

‘You know he loves you very much.’

‘I know. But it doesn’t change anything.’

‘It changes everything, Sky.’ My grandmother shakes her head. ‘He will be devastated, absolutely devastated.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sky dear, don’t you—’ But she’s interrupted by a loud ringing. We both look around. It’s not the doorbell. The home phone?

‘Probably just a telemarketer,’ she says. ‘We’ll ignore it.’

But the phone keeps ringing. And when it stops, it starts again, and doesn’t end.

She finally gets up to answer the phone in the kitchen. ‘We’re not interested.’

I expect her to hang up, but instead there’s silence. I go to the kitchen to see what’s happening. Her face is drained of colour and has turned a grey-beige.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, but she waves me away.

‘Thank you for calling, we’re coming immediately.’ She hangs up. ‘That was the hospital. Adam’s been in an accident.’

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

‘Accident?’ I say, my mind slowly processing her words. ‘Is he okay?’

‘Hit by a car.’ My grandmother stares at the phone. ‘They wouldn’t tell me any more.’

‘But is he all right?’ I ask, my voice an octave higher than usual.

‘I don’t know. We have to go, now.’

‘Should I come too?’

But she hasn’t heard me, and has rushed upstairs to get Mike. He follows her downstairs also ashen-faced. She then runs around the house, seemingly gathering random things until Mike screams at her that they have to leave already.

Since nobody has a car, we have to call a taxi. I try to call Melody but hear her phone ringing from the bathroom, forgotten by the sink.

I grab my coat and we stand outside waiting for the cab, zombie-like.

I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him.

It’s looping in my head.