After a moment, Mum says. ‘Well, I bet you’re doing brilliantly, Meg. Elsa probably hasn’t even noticed I’ve gone.’

‘She has!’ My voice comes out loud, like I need her to hear this wherever she is in Myanmar. ‘She misses you.’

‘Meg, I’ll be home in a week. If you could see the work we’re doing here, you’d understand why I had to come. They need me.’

We need you, I think, but I don’t say it. It’s like I don’t think she deserves to know. Instead, I say, ‘You know I’ve got the NASA competition next Saturday?’

‘I said I’ll be back in a week. Look, I’m going to have to go. I’m on someone else’s phone.’ I can sense her pulling back from me, trying to get further away than she already is. I imagine the sun shining down on her, glittering on her bracelets and I feel so angry that I don’t trust myself to speak. ‘Thank you for looking after Elsa, but remember your grandad’s probably not as hopeless as you think. You can always take her round there if it gets too much for you. Big hugs, my love!’

The line crackles then goes dead.

I thought speaking to Mum would make me feel better, that I might understand why she thought it was OK to just leave us like she did, but I feel even worse than I did before. I shut my eyes and rest my head back against the wall. Somewhere a bird is singing. It’s so peaceful here, but my mind is all tangled up. I get that Mum is helping people – when she puts her mind to something she can do amazing things. I should probably feel proud that she’s just dropped everything to go and help them.

But I don’t feel proud. I feel jealous. Jealous that they’ve got her and that I haven’t. And angry because she found it so easy to leave us.

I’ve spent so much time wanting to be free from Mum and the chaos she brings into my life, but now it’s happened, I feel more tied to her than ever before.

THIRTY-FOUR

‘Oi, Meg!’ I open my eyes. At the bottom of the slope, Ed is shading his eyes and looking up at me. ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

I get up and brush grass off my trousers. I’ve been sitting here so long my legs have gone dead. ‘No one asked you to.’

He gives me an uncertain smile. ‘You all right?’

I join him on the path. ‘Yep. Just … thinking.’

‘About quantum mechanics?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I’ve got your bag,’ he holds it up, ‘and I’m lost. Can you use your superior skills to get us back to the physics department?’

‘OK.’

We start walking along a covered walkway. ‘So who was that?’ says Ed.

‘My mum.’

He looks at me curiously. ‘You ran off fast.’

‘The reception was bad.’

‘My mum’s always ringing me, but I let it go to voicemail.’ He starts telling me about how his mum gets in touch if he’s one minute late from school and that once she got him pulled out of football practice to check he was OK. I let him talk, saying the occasional ‘mmm’, and at the same time leading us back to the physics department.