But I also feel awful, because this one was my fault. I pushed too hard. I ignored my spoon count. I wanted to Live so badly that I forgot that real Living isn’t the same now as it used to be. As it is for Rowan and Cecelia.

And I hurt them, too. Both of them. And I feel that like fire running through the hollows of my bones.

‘It’s not your fault, sweetheart,’ Mum says.

She pinches my wrists lightly between her fingers and thumbs. But it doesn’t work this time.

34

Alice

She comes in like a whirlwind and I can’t find a breeze to help me move.

Cecelia. Her usual bright colours have been washed out to a navy blue hoodie and stonewash jeans. And I’m here in this bed, wired up to machines that beep – my hair having only had a dry-shampoo wash in days and I generally still feel a little bit like death.

She had her chin in the air and a thunderstorm face when she first slammed open the bedroom door, but now she’s frozen – her fingers still on the handle.

And she sees.

I try to sit up. Try to hide the Illness from her. Try to smile and make room for her to fill my space with hers, just for a little while. And I try to say that I’m sorry.

But I can’t do any of it. All my spoons are fighting the Illness today. So all I can do is lie there, and look, and fall impossibly far without moving an inch.

Dad comes up the stairs behind her. ‘How’d you sneak in?’ He offers her a sausage from his plate, but she’s still staring at me like she’s discovered a dead body.

Dad shuffles past her into my room, humming to himself, and I try to catch his eye and tell him, Don’t let her see. Don’t let her see this.

‘Come to make this one feel better, have you? That’s good of you.’

He sits on the bed and takes the plate of sausages and starts cutting them up small and it must be lunchtime and oh no.

No, no, no.

Cecelia’s eyes are wide and she’s gripping the door frame like she, too, might fall over. And she watches as Dad opens my jaw for me and places a tiny amount of food in my mouth.

And I think about what she must be seeing. Her friend, who always just seemed a bit tired and overdramatic, being fed like a toddler. Hooked up to machines her parents bought on eBay so they could turn her bedroom into a hospital. Looking like it might be too much energy to keep her eyes open.

Cecelia clears her throat. ‘What happened to her?’