“This was her room, you know.”

“What?!” He spun around. “This was my mum’s room?”

His grandmother nodded. “She used to practice her violin for hours standing just there. In front of the window. You can still see the grooves of her feet on the floorboards.”

Rio glanced to where she was pointing. To a slightly darkened, furrowed patch where the grain was noticeably more worn than the surrounding boards and where, if you looked hard enough, you could just about make out the outline of a pair of feet.

Without stopping to think, he moved across, carefully placing his own feet where his mother’s had been all those years before. Because she was so petite, it was a perfect match. The wood felt warm under his toes. And something else too. Something raw and alive. Standing there in her footprints, it was as if he could feel her music coursing up from the soul of the house where it had been hiding all these years.

Rio closed his eyes, and it was as if his mother were there, right in front of him, holding her violin against her neck, her eyes lit up as—

“I’m . . . I’m sorry things have turned out the way they have,” Fran said, faltering. At the sound of her voice, his neck and shoulders stiffened and the music abruptly faded. “But she’s in the right place.”

“Sh-sh-she’s going to get better!” Rio retorted angrily. “I’ll be back home in four weeks and . . . and you’ll see! Everything will be normal again!”

Fran opened her mouth to say something but then seemed to decide against it. “Sleep well, then. I’ll see you in the morning.”

3

Mum

It was exactly one month ago, when Rio found out he was being sent to California. It was a Tuesday evening in December, and he’d been sitting next to his mom on the sofa while they watched a documentary about polar bears in the Arctic. They were sharing two thick, gooey slices of chocolate cake dished up inside an empty violin case along with a pot of tea.

“Rio-cat,” she said tentatively. This was her special name for him because his ears were ever so slightly pointy at the tips. “I—I—I have something to tell you.”

“Mmmmm,” he answered distractedly, wondering if she’d let him eat the last bit of cake even though he’d eaten almost all of her slice already.

“I have to go away for a bit,” she said so quietly Rio thought that he’d misheard.

“Go away?” He turned to her in surprise. He couldn’t even remember the last time they’d left London. “Where?”

His mom tucked a stray strand of red hair behind her ear and swallowed nervously. Her face was alarmingly flushed. “A . . . hospital.”

Rio’s throat tightened so much he could barely breathe. He looked at her aghast.

“A hospital? Wh-wh-what kind of hospital?”

“A special one.” His mother sighed, wiped some crumbs from his chin, and explained how some hospitals weren’t just for people with physical illnesses. Some hospitals were for people who needed help in other, more invisible ways.