“We could tell them we’ve just noticed some missing. They won’t know it was us.”

“They will.” My fingers tighten on her arm. She doesn’t blink as she peers at me, a lattice of pink lines on her eyeballs.

Then she slides her arm free and smooths her pajama sleeve. She smooths mine, too, unnecessarily, the gesture a minuscule comfort to us both. There’s a long pause as I watch her weighing things up. My own thought processes are gagged by fear.

“I’m going to make us some tea,” she says hoarsely.

She walks into the kitchen, her footsteps soft, as though she’s tiptoeing. The tap hisses and a cupboard door swings. I lean against the rutted wallpaper, shivering in the draft.

—

We sit dumbly at the kitchen table, sneaking glances at one another as if afraid of what we might talk ourselves into, or out of. My tea’s too hot, then too cold, but I sip it anyway, at intervals, when I remember it’s there. It’s daytime now but the sun is more like moonlight, white and cold. Next door’s kids wake up and start yelling; traffic noise rises from the streets below.

The phone rings again at half past seven. I scramble to my feet, Becca following me into the hall, her breath in my left ear as I press the phone to my right.

“Hello?”

“It’s me,” Mum says.

Footsteps of dread patter up my spine. “How’s Nick?” I manage.

“He’s . . .” Mum falters. “He’s gone.”

Something in my brain blocks the full meaning of her words. “Gone?”

“He didn’t make it.”

There’s a suspended moment, almost an anticlimax, until the reality of what she’s just said smacks me on the back of the neck.

“Oh, my God, Mum.”

“He seemed to be improving, almost stable, but then . . . Then he stopped breathing. It was all so surreal . . . doctors rushing in. Like on TV, Kate.” She sounds spaced out. “Except they didn’t save him. They usually do, in the programs, don’t they? Everything went so still. I could see through the door. I saw the moment they all gave up.”

“Why did it happen?”

“They don’t know. There’ll be a postmortem.”

Becca’s doing an agitated dance beside me. I hold my hand up because I want her to stop, I can’t get any words together.

“Do you want us to come down there, Mum?”

“I . . . no. I’ll come home as soon as I can. I have to go now. There’re things to sort out . . . God, such a lot to sort out. I can’t believe it. It doesn’t feel real.”

Her breathing comes soft and slow down the line, an echoey hospital bustle in the background, before the dial tone hums.