I nod. The pressure in my heart grows until I think it is going to turn inside out. I’d dearly love to tell Eddie everything, but when I try to put into words how thinking of Maddie makes me feel, nothing comes out. It’s a wound that consumes me, like laughter waiting to be heard. It is my rampant hope of being with her and the terrible fear of having to endure a lifetime without her.

“Excuse me, I need the toilet,” I mumble.

When I come back after what feels like five thousand years, Eddie’s standing in the kitchenette, still clasping the book.

“It’s Maddie’s birthday in three days,” I say. “And nobody knows what she likes. It’s important to know, just as important as with Dad.”

She waits, nods, and replies, “I know what he likes—and I hope he likes it so much it’ll bring him back.”

“Nobody knows Maddie, apart, maybe, from—”

“The librarian.”

I shrug my shoulders. It suddenly strikes me as a stupid idea.

“Maybe we should go to Oxford,” Eddie suggests, “and take the book back.”

“Yes, maybe. I could go in the holidays if—”

“No, Sam, I don’t mean in the holidays, I mean now. Let’s drive to Oxford now and visit Madelyn’s library. Let’s set off straightaway and find out what else she enjoyed reading.”

My mouth must be hanging open like a cow’s as I stare at her, but she’s being completely serious. I think of Maddie’s birthday in three days’ time and I realize that there’s practically nothing in her coma book and that my heart is still attempting to turn itself inside out and scream and sing its emotions when I think of her.

“Straightaway? Really?” I ask. Perhaps she’s only putting me on. Maybe this is all a cruel joke.

Eddie puts her hands on her hips. “Yeah, straightaway,” she replies. “Let’s do it. Let’s look for Maddie.”

As she says this, it’s as if a door has been opened in my life and the sunshine comes pouring in.

I call to Scott, “Eddie and I are off to Oxford. See you this evening, okay?”

Scott takes a peep at Poppy, shrugs, and remarks with all the self-assurance of an almost-fourteen-year-old, “Sure. I’m still needed here.”

Sunlight is flooding through every window in my day.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER Eddie is getting in the lane to take the main road to Oxford. The weather’s living up to every cliché about England: it’s drizzling.

“Your father was never like a British shower,” Eddie remarks out of the blue. Her hands on the steering wheel are relaxed, but she has her eyes firmly trained on the road ahead. “If people were weather, your father would be an Atlantic storm.”