I shake my head. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you lost for words.’

‘It’s the camera, okay! It – it threw me.’

Mum and Dad continue to laugh at her, but over it I’m trying to listen. Because now, standing on-screen, is Jonah. Yellow-haired and waving into the camera like he’s seeing me behind it again. And he’s fine. He’s fine.

‘Shhh!’ I say, and the others fall quiet. ‘Let’s listen.’

The reporter bends down to him. ‘Jonah, what were you doing all the way up the tower in the first place?’

He grins and there’s that missing tooth. ‘I wanted to see the flowers.’

‘There are flowers all the way up there?’ the reporter asks.

Jonah shrugs. ‘My brother can make flowers out of nowhere, and big octopuses, too. He can do anything.’

The shot cuts to Rowan waving awkwardly at the camera while speaking to someone on the phone and my heart leaps. I want to pause it. Spend time looking at his long fingers and slanted smile. To look properly at his clothes – the same ones he was wearing when I saw him in real, technicolour life – like looking into a parallel universe where life carried on after mine stopped for a while – where my best friend was interviewed live on TV, and Rowan listened to me and walked back.

I can feel Cecelia’s eyes on me, waiting to crack a joke, though, so I let the moment pass.

The reporter is back to Jonah now. ‘And are you pleased you were rescued?’

He sighs, like he’s really trying to think about it. ‘I could have got down on my own probably, because I got up there all by myself. But it was nice having Cecelia there, too – she makes me laugh.’

On the screen, Jonah holds Cecelia’s hand and Cecelia smiles in a strange, panicky way that shows her teeth.

This time, she manages to wrestle the remote away from Dad.

‘Aaaaand delete. Honestly – that kid. Risked my neck going up to save him and the best thing he can say is that I cracked a couple of jokes up there.’

‘Bet he couldn’t get down fast enough,’ Mum says, sliding away from Cecelia’s hands as she tries to flick her.

But the reporter knows she did more than that, and we all do, too. So, when Mum and Dad leave, I use a spoon to hug her.

Hugging a hero = 1 spoon

‘Thank you for saving him,’ I say.

She pats my arm. ‘You would’ve done the same if you could.’

‘Have things got better now? With the others at school?’