Since my ears are the only bit of me that works, I’ve become acutely sensitive to details, to changes in intonations. I’d never realized how much you could grasp just from listening. On the TV, there are programmes where they pretend to judge singers purely on their voices, but everyone knows that’s crap, because, before they appear on stage, the competitors are preselected by people who’ve seen them. Result: not many ugly ones, just a few to make it look more authentic, but they’re thrown out in the later stages, seeing as they’re ugly. The ugly people always lose at some point – that’s the rule. Me, if I was one of the judges, I’d make sure the ugly ones won, because now I know how important it is to really listen to people without being affected by appearances. If you listen closely to someone, if you concentrate hard, it’s as if you can see them. No, it’s even better: you hear what the person says and also what they don’t say. Me, I listen to the silences, the hesitations, the words they choose, the ones that slipped out and they wish they hadn’t said, the melody, the humour, their breathing. That’s all I do. I decipher, I understand voices.

I’ve picked up on several things in Mum’s voice recently. Three, to be exact. Three things that Mum hasn’t told me, but which I’ve sussed anyway.

The first one is that Mum’s got a crush on Edgar. I’m convinced. That’s new, too. I’ve never ever heard Mum talk about someone in such glowing language. I must admit, I’m super envious. She talks all the time about what she did with Edgar, or – worse – and this makes me a thousand times more envious – with Isa. Over the past few days, she’s involved both of them in the challenges in my Book of Wonders. At first, it made me sick. I had the feeling that Edgar and Isa were taking my place in Mum’s heart. Now, I’m still envious, I can’t help it. But I really like Edgar and I adore Isa, so I tell myself that, if I am going to be replaced, it may as well be by the best league players. So, I listen to Mum telling me about my dreams and living my life in my stead with her new friends. It hurts not to be part of it all, but, at the same time, it does me no end of good! Mum’s had so much fun turning the pages and doing the things written in my notebook. She always manages to make me laugh my head off and cheer me up when she tells me about her adventures. I’m sure it’s good for me to be shaken up, even though I can’t move.