‘I’m sick. I know I am. I can feel it. I look at myself in the mirror and I can see it. Why can’t they find it?’ Her voice was weird and low and desperate.

My mum’s sick.

‘They will,’ Geoff said kindly. I looked at him. He was pale, but otherwise normal. Carlos was nodding. I felt my breath quicken, my stomach churn, something awful rise up in my throat.

‘I know,’ Frannie said. There was a strand of hair on my face and I brushed it behind my ear. Another, and another, tickling but not tickling. Scratching. I brushed them all back. Slivers of glass stinging my forehead. Glitter.

‘It’s just so hard. I can’t start treatment until they find it. I’m rotting from the inside and they can’t find it.’

Donna shifted next to me. Everyone else was nodding and smiling at her like it was normal. Like this was normal. Like nothing had happened.

I made a sound. Odd, low. Geoff looked at me, and I glared at him until he stopped.

‘I’m so tired. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m sick and nobody will help me.’

My mum’s sick.

Is she going to die?

A surge of anger charged up my spine. ‘What if you’re not?’ I asked, before I could stop myself. I heard Donna say my name, hated the sound of her voice. Hated everyone, everything in this room. The calm, patient nodding like everything was going to be okay. Not fixing anything, not even trying. And I’d been trying so hard. ‘What if you’re not sick at all?’

My mum’s sick.

I took a breath, but I wasn’t there anymore.

I was fourteen, standing in a bathroom, pink and white, and stinking of vomit.

Lina was getting a textbook from her room and I needed to go to the bathroom and that’s where she was, head bent around the toilet, feet blocking the door. It smelled like vomit, but worse. Hot and sour.

Like death.

I liked her. I’d always liked her. Sometimes when she spoke it was like I understood her better than anyone.

I blinked. Frannie was looking at me, surprised, her eyebrows knotting together in a confused frown.

‘What if the reason they can’t find this cancer is because there is no cancer?’ I inhaled sharply. ‘What if you’re perfectly healthy and you’re going to be perfectly healthy for another forty years? What then? What if you’re not dying?’ My voice was too fast, too loud, and when I stopped everyone was staring at me, cold, hard eyes telling me how stupid I was for not understanding. ‘What if none of us are? This is horrible. This is absolutely fucking horrible.’

My mum’s sick.