I shrug. ‘So?’

‘Maggie.’

I sigh. ‘Will.’

‘Come to the Lodge for lunch. I want Mum and Euan to meet you properly.’

Panic tightens like a belt around my chest as he sits up, glances towards the drawn curtain, still bright with morning sunlight. Perhaps he takes my silence as encouragement, because that smile only gets bigger. ‘Come for me. Mum was bad on Wednesday, but it isn’t always like that.’

And there it is. The biggest reason of all why I can’t.

I shake my head. Look down at our clasped fingers, his thumb moving over my knuckles.

‘Hey.’ The sharpness of his voice makes me look up. He stares at me, unblinking. ‘You can tell me anything, you know.’

‘I’m bipolar.’

And when his expression doesn’t change, when he just goes on touching me, I keep going. I try to make it worse. I tell him everything I told Kelly and more. About Mum, about me, about what happened at the crematorium, about the Maudsley.

‘I’m sorry,’ Will says. And when I feel brave enough to look at him again, there’s no pity in his eyes. And that suddenly makes me so mad, I want to punch the understanding out of him. He hasn’t got a clue.

‘I was psychotic that day, Will. I was a crazy person. And it could happen again. You don’t need that in your life. Especially with your mum being ill. Trust me. You don’t want that.’

Because ninety-nine per cent of me knows when I’m high, knows even when it’s coming. But the one per cent that doesn’t is undeniable. Unreliable. That one per cent is there. And especially since that day in Hither Green Crematorium, I can’t trust it at all. I can’t trust me. I can’t even trust the things that I want to believe; that I hope – need – to be true.

‘I’m sure it’s hard,’ Will says, shaking his head. ‘Bad. But it’s not the same. Mum’s only going to get worse.’ A burst of anger darkens his eyes. ‘That’s it. That’s all. She’s just going to get worse.’

‘I’m sorry.’ It’s easier not to look him, so I stare at that bright square of light behind the curtain instead. I see Mum’s face – thin, white, eaten by shadows. It’s so close – I know it. The pain will send me mad, Maggie. It’s coming back and it will send me mad. I know it. I see it.

‘I killed her,’ I say. ‘My mum. I helped her die.’

I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Why I’m saying this – spewing out some awful confession, when I’ve never wanted to before. I feel stripped down to my bones. Maybe this is the new me I’m trying to become. Or maybe I just finally need to tell someone – I couldn’t, after all, even tell Dr Abebe. And maybe I need to tell someone why I’m here too. Why I need Robert Reid to have been murdered. Why the things that I hope for are as awful as they are self-serving.