It’s a scrapbook. Filled with photos of us from the first day we met at a school sports day, when we came joint first in the long-jump competition and refused to share the medal. All the way to this Christmas, when Cecelia joined us for our traditional Boxing Day fry-up. And I’ve stuck other things in there, too, like the ticket stub from the minigolf when she broke the dinosaur, and shells we picked up from the seabed that time we went to Wales together.

It’s a whole life stuffed into a book. And it’s nearly killed me to make it, but I need it to be amazing if she’s ever going to forgive me for this …

So sorry, I’ve caught a cold –

I delete it. She’ll never let me off for just a cold, even if that is usually enough to take spoons for weeks and weeks.

I can’t come Friday night ☹ – family
emergency.

I’m just wondering whether I can convince Dad to lie for me when he appears in my room, a tea towel flung over his shoulder.

‘Dad, what do you think about –’

He marches to the bed, sticking his face right in mine. ‘Spoon count.’

There’s this look in his eye. It’s a look I remember from when we were at the top of mountains on bikes and he would search me, making sure I had the gall to go down the slopes without falling off.

‘Five,’ I lie.

Silently, he reaches under me, lifts me up. I drop my phone before I can send the text.

‘Hurry!’ Mum whispers up the stairs.

He carries me out of the room and I try to read what he’s written on the Cure Board for this week, but it’s too small. But whatever it is, it makes him take me out on to the landing. And down the stairs.

I hold my breath and grip him, tight.

Holding on to Dad = 1 spoon

I can feel Dad’s body working like a piston to carry me, and I can smell all the cooking smells from dinner mingled with lemon washing-up liquid. I try to take it all in as we go, because it seems like ages since I was down here, but things have been frozen all this time. The phone balanced on a stack of magazines on the hall table. The living-room sofa with the rip in the seat that Dad keeps saying he’s going to fix but never quite gets round to. And the patio doors, thrown open like we’re in the middle of a summer’s day.

Being downstairs = 2 spoons

My heart is beating fast now, because I can see that it’s dusk outside, and the world is ocean-blue. Dad readjusts his hold on me and carries me through the living room to the doors.

‘Outside?’ I gasp, clutching hold of his neck, tight.

Mum’s there, waiting with a sunlounger.