His words make the tingle of connection come rushing back. ‘Look up,’ I say. He tilts his head back and takes in the galaxy Mum painted on the ceiling. ‘You need to lie down to see it properly.’ I go to the bed and sweep the toys on to the floor. Ed hesitates and too late I realise what a weird thing I’ve just asked him to do. ‘She did the interstellar dust and the Perseus arm really well,’ I say quickly, deciding to go full-on technical so he knows I want him to lie on my bed purely in the interests of astrophysics.

‘OK,’ he says, then he lies down, crosses his feet at the ankles and stares up at the ceiling. ‘Which one is the Perseus arm?’ He shifts closer to the wall. ‘Show me.’

Still in the interests of astrophysics, I lie next to him, making sure I leave a gap between us. ‘There.’ I point at the middle arm of the spiral that’s speckled pink, turquoise and white.

‘What’s the name of the arm coming right out of the middle?’

‘The Scutum–Centaurus.’

He turns to look at me and suddenly all I can think about is what Annie said about sapiosexuals. ‘Ed,’ I say, trying to casually check out his pupils.

‘Yes?’

Too late, I realise that you can’t casually check out someone’s pupils without staring deep into their eyes. ‘Did you know that we’re around twenty-six thousand miles from the galactic centre?’

After a moment, he says, ‘I didn’t know that … but I do know that our galaxy is roughly one hundred and twenty thousand light years in diameter.’

Now he’s looking at me and I’m looking at him and I haven’t got a clue what his pupils are doing because I’m so worried that mine are expanding faster than the universe.

‘That’s big …’

He nods and then I realise that somehow when I turned to face him, my arm moved over and now our fingers are just touching and neither of us have moved our hands away.

‘Meg,’ says Ed, and his little finger sort of loops round mine. I nod, but I can’t speak because there’s a chance that we are holding fingers. How can such a tiny force create such a powerful counter reaction inside my body? ‘I think –’

But I don’t get to find out what Ed thinks, because there’s a scuffle of paws, a flash of grey fur and Pongo crashes between us on the bed, barking and licking our faces. I jump up as Ed tries to push Pongo away.

‘I heard Elsa,’ I say, then I shoot out of the room, kicking plush Winnie the Poohs and Olafs out of my way.

FORTY-THREE

‘Wake up!’ I whisper, shaking Elsa’s shoulder. I can hear Ed walking down the corridor so I pick her up and rock her up and down until her eyes flutter open. Ed appears in the doorway, smoothing down his hair and straightening his shirt. I grab a book off the table. ‘I was thinking I could use this to improve my introduction.’