So the pain has gone, which is a good thing. But what’s worrying me now is that whatever caused the bleeding must still be there inside my body, though I have no idea what it might be. I had a look through Sarge’s medical books but the sections on bleeding were all about battle injuries. And there was no mention of bleeding from down there. In fact, there was no mention of women at all. It seems that when it comes to war only men bleed.

6.45 p.m.

Everything is okay. I’m not dying.

I’M NOT DYING.

I needed to write that in capitals to make it real. I really thought I was heading for my grave, that something silent and invisible was killing me from the inside.

But then this evening when I was setting up the stall, Isobel arrived. My Isobel. She must have walked from the village because there was no sign of her dad or the car. I got a weird feeling in my chest when I saw her, a fluttery feeling like I was going to pass out. My hands started shaking too and I thought I was going to drop the eggs.

She wasn’t wearing her school uniform this time. She was wearing a dress. White, with red poppies on it which for a moment reminded me of my bloody sheets. She said hello in that gentle voice of hers then asked if she could buy a dozen eggs. While I was putting the eggs into the box she asked me if I was okay. No one had asked me that question for such a long time and, after days of bleeding and worrying about Sarge, to hear someone ask that almost brought me to tears. I looked up at her, right into her eyes, and those eyes told me that this was a person I could trust.

And so I told her. I told her everything, about the pain and the blood and the sheets and how scared I was and how I thought I was going to die, and all the while I kept looking at those red flowers on her dress until they blurred in front of my eyes and I realized I was crying.

‘It’s okay.’

That’s what she said to me. It’s okay. And it felt like a warm blanket wrapped round your legs on the coldest day of the year. She put her arm on my shoulder and then she explained that what I’d experienced was something called menstruation and that it happens to all women once a month. She started hers two years ago when she was thirteen. ‘Quite late really,’ she said. I asked her why it happened and she said it’s to do with the body getting ready to have babies. When she said this I panicked and said that I didn’t want babies but she said the blood was a sign there were no babies there, and for that to happen I’d need to have sex, and then she kind of giggled and said, ‘And I don’t think you’ll be doing that until you’re a bit older.’