‘Breathe, Granfer.’ His body was rigid as if somebody was sending an electric charge through him. ‘Breathe.’ The plastic mask misted and cleared with the breaths he managed to draw in. I chewed my lip, wondering if I should leave him to shake Jago awake, but just as I was about to stand up, the tortured gasps seemed to abate and Granfer’s face lost its violent purple hue. I glanced down at the smear of dark blood on the handkerchief. He caught me looking and balled it up to hide it.

When I was younger I used to daydream he had a transplant, that his black and shrivelled lungs were cut out and fresh pink ones sewn into their place. I’d imagine him waking from the anaesthetic with silent breathing, air slipping in and out of him discreetly and without pain. I’d see him flying kites on Sennen Beach with me and Jago, or rowing us out to catch mackerel and ling which we’d later bake into a stargazy pie, little fish heads poking out from the pastry with their eyes cooked to a cloudy grey.

‘I’ve met a friend,’ I said, when his body lost the last of its rigidity. ‘She lives in the white house on the cliff. You know the one? The one Dad loved.’

He gestured for me to lift up his mask and I did, leaving it on his forehead like a jaunty Christmas party hat. ‘Is she as nice… as Penny?’

Granfer had only met Penny once. It was a few years ago when she knocked on our door with a school sweater of mine.

This is Tamsyn’s.

My heart had skipped when I recognised her voice. Someone from my school at our house? It felt dangerous and unsafe, as if two planets had veered off orbit and crashed into each other.

She’s here… Do you… want to see… her?

No, it’s fine—

Tamsyn!

Then he’d collapsed into one of his fits and I’d run out from my hiding place behind the door in the sitting room to make sure he was okay. Penny was eyeing my grandad with thinly veiled revulsion. I noticed he had a globule of mucus threaded with blood on his sweater. I wiped it off with my sleeve then slipped my hand into his and squeezed. I faced her, pushing back my shoulders and raising my chin. She thrust out my sweater.

I picked it up by mistake.

I gave her the evils as I took it but she didn’t notice because she’d gone back to staring at Granfer.

Thanks then.

Penny forced a tight smile and stepped backwards off the doorstep.

Mum said to say hi to yours.

Then she was gone like a dog from the traps. Penny was the only person from school who’d ever come to our house and because of this Granfer had decided she was my best friend.

‘She’s nicer than Penny,’ I said.

‘Must be… a cracker then.’ He smiled and lowered the mask and went back to the jigsaw pieces, with the sound of oxygen hissing softly in the background.