But Callie had loved that show and, somehow, it had become their thing. Sharon and Callie had been watching it together for a while. Not because Sharon liked the programme – she detested the format entirely – but because it was something they could talk about, something they shared. Danny couldn’t even be in the same room while the show was on, and Jamie would generally spend his evenings at the park with his mates and a football or in his room on his games console, so that hour of trash television became about mother and daughter laughing and scowling together. It was one of the few times when Callie seemed to really listen to her mother’s opinions, when they really talked. It had never mattered that it was just about loose morals or bitchy strangers. Sometimes they would move onto other things and Callie would even open up a little. Sharon talked to friends who had daughters of a similar age and they professed their jealousy, about how they wished they still had something in common. They’d all agreed that when you have a teenage daughter you have to take any opportunity you get.

Sharon certainly knew that now.

Callie had been shifted to sit up straighter. She still had the tubes and machinery assisting her breathing but the nurses were expecting a reaction to them soon. The sedation was slowly being removed. Soon she would return to the world, her hands snatching and pulling at the obstructions in her throat. She was going to be scared and confused. Sharon wanted so much to be there when it happened. Jamie did too. He played football on a Sunday morning and today his game was on the outskirts of Ashford, giving Sharon the perfect opportunity to visit. When she had told him her plans it had been the first time she had ever seen him reluctant to play. He had wanted to come here, to be with his sister, to talk to her and tell her how much he had missed her. She had needed to promise that they would keep to their usual Sunday schedule and visit again later in the day – and of course she would – she never minded coming back.

‘How’s it going?’ a voice came from behind her.

Sharon had been staring down, her whole world contained on that bed, but her head snapped up to the sound of the mother of another patient. The bed next to them held the delicate frame of a girl who was a similar age to Callie. She suffered with epilepsy and her mother had previously explained that her daughter had suffered with it all her life but her latest seizure had been so severe that she had been left further from consciousness even than Callie was.