When we made the Five-Year Plan we made sure we thought of everything, because Jax says having a plan is the first rule of comedy. He’s got loads of those, by the way. Last year he even made a book of all the first rules of comedy and gave it to me for my eleventh birthday. It’s not really a book, it’s actually five pieces of paper stapled together at the side, but it’s got a cover and a contents page and it’s the coolest present I ever got. It’s called The First Rules of Comedy.

Anyhow, even though we made sure we thought of everything we were actually wrong, because there was one thing we didn’t think of. Which was what would happen if the other person in your comedy duo died. Because you don’t expect that, do you? Although considering one never knows and the Two Ronnies, maybe we should have.

I think I’m okay about dying, just as long as it’s not people I know. Like when Marnie Cunningham’s father was killed fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan when I was eight and we had a special assembly at school, I couldn’t really feel too sad because I didn’t know him. But I did do what the Head said, which was take a moment to think about him in silence and consider the ultimate sacrifice he’d made for our country. Even though Jax said that it was all BS and Mr. Cunningham had actually made the ultimate sacrifice for a whole lot of stuff that had nothing to do with any of us.

It’s funny how your brain works, and I mean my brain really, because I don’t know how anyone else’s works. But I say that because when Mum woke me up to tell me about Jax the first thing that popped into my head was that I wished I’d gone up and patted Marnie Cunningham on the shoulder, or made her a card or given her a mini Crunchie bar. Anything apart from what I actually did, which was nothing except what the Head told us to.

I just lay there in my bed with Mum holding my hand telling me the worst thing I’d ever heard and I wished I’d said something to Marnie that might have stopped her from feeling like a massive hairy yin was trying to eat its way out of her insides with a rusty knife and fork, which was how I felt when Mum told me about Jax. That was actually my first thought, so you can see why I say my brain works in a funny way.

I can’t remember when my granny and grandad died because I wasn’t even born, so I can’t really feel sad when I think about them, either. It’s kind of like thinking about Tommy Cooper, like you know he was a great comedian and you wish he wasn’t dead and all, but there are no hairy yins chewing up your tummy from the inside when you think about him.