And I prepare myself. Because I know that when my body is back again, I have a whole new world to step into. And for that I’m going to need something special.

Not my streamers. Not Rowan. Not even Mum and Dad.

I’m going to need Alice. Because, when it comes to capital-L Living, she’s all I’ve got.

76

Alice

It almost seems impossible, but I’ve made a new friend.

I didn’t know her name for a few days. Just the kind crinkle of her eyes. The wink she gave me when she was saying something I couldn’t quite understand, but which made me feel that, whatever it was, it was something nice. But then I caught a glimpse of her nametag – three letters that it took spoons and spoons to read, but that eventually detangled themselves in my head and became a word.

May.

May wears blue scrubs and a gold necklace round her neck with a coin on it. She wears glitter on her eyelids, and when she leans over to check the beeping by my bed she smells like the inside of a dressing room on the set of a Hollywood film.

I can’t tell May my name because I can’t make my lips move. But she seems to know it anyway and whispers secrets in my ear like we’re old friends.

Sometimes she tells jokes. And hours after she’s gone, when the lights have been turned low and I can gather the spoons to wake up, the jokes tumble into pictures and I laugh.

And somehow, days and days and days later, May is there suddenly, whispering to me about Mum and Dad, and the words sink in like quicksand.

‘Don’t tell your dad, Alice, but your mum messed with him when he was asleep just now.’

Words. Words I understand. And I can slide my eyes to the left in time to see Dad stretching – his own glitter eyeshadow brightening his face. And somewhere inside I laugh.

May sees. And her face cracks into a smile that shows beautiful gapped teeth.

‘There you are,’ she says. ‘I see you.’

77

Alice

I’m being discharged.

Away from the impossibly bright lights, and the beeping, and the people who became my friends. Away from the questions we can’t answer, and they can’t, either.

Mum isn’t crying this time, though. And the bags they have wired into my veins have been drip-feeding spoons and gluing the lines back together between Me and my body.

And as I’m wheeled out with my sunglasses on and my earplugs in, I hunt for May in the faces wishing me luck, and find her hand.

‘You stay away this time, you hear me?’ she says.

‘I’ll try,’ I promise.