It’s warm in Mum’s living room. Warm and ever so slightly musty. The top of the telly is grey with dust, the magazine rack is groaning under the weight of books and magazines piled on top of it, and there are dead flowers on the windowsill; green sludge in the base of the vase instead of water. Even the spider plant on the bureau, a plant so hardy that it could survive a nuclear attack, is wilted and yellow. Its babies, trailing on the carpet on long tendrils, look as though they’ve parachuted out in an attempt to escape. Mum would declare World War III if I offered to tidy up so I do what I can whenever she leaves the room; wipe a tissue over the surfaces when she goes to the loo or tip my glass of water in the spider plant when the postman comes.

I haven’t had a chance today. She hasn’t left my side since I arrived a little after 9 a.m. I haven’t told her about my blackout yet; she thinks I’m here to talk about Billy’s publicity campaign. Mark refused to go to work until I promised him I’d spend the day with her. He’s terrified I’ll go missing again.

He’s not the only one.

The doctor doesn’t know what’s wrong with me. She ran a series of blood tests yesterday and said I’d have to wait a week for the results. It’s terrifying, not knowing what caused me to black out. What if it’s something serious like a brain tumour? What if it happens again? When I asked Dr Evans if it might she said she didn’t know.

I didn’t want to leave her office. I didn’t want to step outside the doors of the surgery and risk it happening again. Mark had to physically lift me off the chair and guide me back outside to the car.

‘See that?’ Mum slides the laptop from her knees to mine and points at the screen with a bitten-down fingernail. ‘That spike in the graph?’

I shake my head. ‘I don’t know what I’m looking at.’

‘They’re the stats for the website. We had a huge peak in page views the day the appeal went out. Over seven thousand people looked at it. Seven thousand, Claire.’

‘And that’s a good thing, is it?’ Dad says, appearing in the doorway to the living room.

‘Derek.’ Mum shoots him a warning look. ‘If you can’t say something good—’

‘It’s okay, Mum,’ I say. ‘I know what Dad’s thinking.’

‘Your dad’s not thinking anything.’ Her eyes don’t leave his face. ‘Are you, Derek?’