I glance at the door to Mum’s room, imagining Nick’s body draped around hers, thinking of long-ago mornings when I used to fly in and launch myself onto her sleepy form, burrowing under the covers to snuggle against her warm back. Now a horrible feeling of shyness and exclusion prickles over me. I don’t know who she is when she’s with him. She doesn’t seem to belong to me.

In the bathroom, Becca is crouched over the toilet. Chunks of pale sick float in the bottom of the bowl. The smell makes me stretch the collar of my pajama top over my mouth and nose.

“Sorry,” she says. “Gross, I know.”

“How much did you drink?”

“Not loads. But it doesn’t mix too great with my tablets. Makes the side effects worse. Plus the meds turn me into a major lightweight.”

“Oh,” I say, remembering. “Do they work?”

“They’ve had me on a few different combos. These seem to do the trick. Side effects are annoying, though.” She yawns widely. “The drowsiness does my head in.”

I’m distracted now, recalling a steaming-hot afternoon five years ago, in Auntie Rach and Uncle Jack’s back garden. When it happened, all the adults were inside drinking beers, pressing the fridge-cold bottles against their cheeks, Uncle Jack’s records turned up loud.

Becca and I were outside playing catch. Seeing how long we could keep throwing the ball without it hitting the ground. I was never very good at it, Becca was always better, but we’d almost broken our own record this time. I remember the unnerving moment when I threw the ball to her and it landed at her feet because she was standing rigidly still. I giggled, thinking she was messing about, but then she tipped backward onto the lawn and began to jerk. Eyes rolling. One arm smacking the ground. Lips tinged blue. I screamed for the grown-ups, and tried to stop her hurting herself by slipping my hand underneath her head. When I yelled again, one of the neighbors appeared over the fence. “Call an ambulance!” I shouted to her. “Please!”

Becca came round looking confused and sleepy. The paramedics said I’d done all the right things, and that my cousin was going to be fine. She’d be tested for epilepsy, treated if necessary. Later, all the adults praised me. They felt guilty for not being there, not hearing me as they’d chatted and danced just inside.