I listen as Wesley’s heart leaps out of its cage as the rest of him

stops.

Carbon fibre fractures. The camera that he had strapped to his chest. Shatters.

WesleyCycles67 is no longer streaming.

Please choose another channel.

2

Alice

Two weeks ago, I died.

But I’m trying not to think about that, as today is a burst of brand new. The sun shining from under my closed curtains is turning Manta’s fish tank into rainbows, and Mum is absent-mindedly singing one of her old show tunes downstairs while she dishes up my breakfast and sorts out my meds.

I smile at her as she comes into my room, and the singing stops. ‘Oh, sorry, sweetheart, I hope I didn’t wake you.’

‘That’s okay,’ I say. ‘You can keep singing.’

But she doesn’t. She’s all tiptoes and hushed tones now as she opens the curtains and sets the bed to snail speed. And the room’s much too quiet for the angry buzzing of the bed motor slowly lifting me up, so I slide on my headphones and disappear into violins and flutes. I lie back and listen, trying to remember what it felt like to be cycling through fields with Wesley at weekends, chasing sheep while looking out at a sea of green cut against an almost perfect line of blue sky.

And then that car comes out of nowhere and everything stops again.

By the time I’m upright, I’m already out of breath.

Mum slides off my headphones. ‘How many spoons are we starting with today?’

‘Ten, I think,’ I say, although I said that yesterday and I was spent by eight.

Sitting up in bed = 1 spoon

Spoons are units of energy. When you’re trapped in bed by a chronic Illness, like I am, there are only so many units to go around. You might have an endless cutlery drawer full of spoons, but these days mine are all in a wobbly pot.

One unit of energy = 1 spoon

We started talking in spoons after we read a blog by Christine Miserandino, who used them as a metaphor for energy loss. Somehow, they’ve found their way into our everyday, now.

When you wake up with only ten spoons, you need to make every single one count.

Mum passes me my breakfast and I try to look happy about having smoked salmon again, for the fifth day in a row.

‘I know.’ She sighs at my strained smile. ‘It’s your dad’s fault. They had an offer on it and he’s packed the fridge full of the bloody stuff. We’ll all be eating it for the next year.’

Dad sticks his head round the door. ‘It was two-for-one, though. You never see that on salmon.’

Mum rolls her eyes and mutters, ‘Thinks we have money to burn, that man.’