I felt like a block of lead. My legs felt too heavy to carry me. My head felt too heavy for my neck to hold it up. My eyes were leaking, and Jesus was squeezing my heart again. Daniel let me hang on to him for ages, and Mr Driver made him a cup of coffee that he drank by sort of leaning it on the top of my head, which I didn’t mind at all. I could hear him slurping and I could hear it going into his insides. I could smell peanut paste and spearmint toothpaste and the funky smell boys had sometimes. I didn’t want to move, but eventually we heard Dad calling over the fence, and Daniel hugged me extra tight and nudged me to get up. He stood and looked at Mr Driver, who said, ‘It will be all right, son. She’ll be fine here. You know she’s always been my special girl. I won’t let anything happen to her, and when your mum is ready, you’ll all find a way forward.’

They shook hands, which reminded me that my brother was a grown-up man now, but then Daniel stepped towards Mr Driver and hugged him briefly before turning and walking out the door. It wasn’t just Mum and Dad that looked and smelled different. Daniel had grown taller and more handsome. His shoulders were broader and his bottom was littler. Dad’s lovely big brown eyes had copied themselves onto his face, as had Mum’s high cheekbones and thin, neat nose. I found myself staring at him very hard, as though I thought he’d leave me again, and I wanted to remember every bit of him I could.

When he left, I just stood at the back door. I didn’t know what to do. After an hour that was about a minute, Mr Driver took my hand and led me outside. We walked down to Sixpence’s house, and he put another chair next to mine, and said why didn’t I tell Sixpence about today. He was pretty sure she would want to know, even all the sad bits. But I couldn’t find my words. After a while he led me back inside, and he didn’t leave me until he tucked me into bed. He sat next to me, and I could tell he was trying to find kind things to say. I heard his back door open and sat up in bed straight up like a rocket ship. I hoped against hope it was my mum or my dad, but it was Daniel. He had brought over my Don Quixote book, which I had forgotten to take back to the school library before I went to the Roystons’. He changed places with Mr Driver and started to read.

I listened to the story I had come to know well. Like me, Don Quixote loved knights and chivalry, and decided he should be a knight-errant in search of adventures. He makes his tired old horse Rocinante take him to an inn he thinks in his mixed-up brain is a castle, and decides to rescue Dulcinea, who is a neighbour who doesn’t even like him much and doesn’t feel the least need to be rescued. It’s a good story, but it’s a sad one too, because Don Quixote made everything up and wasn’t right in the head and couldn’t see the world the way it really was. And I lay there thinking that this was my problem too. I wanted what I wanted and I didn’t notice what the real world looked like. In the real world, Caleb had bad lungs and that was more important than me needing a pet. In the real world, Mum was sick and I was naughty and didn’t help her enough. In the real world, I was meant to notice my little brother was upset and let a grown-up know properly, but I was too busy with my own dreams that had dried up my brain like Mr Quixote.