A single bedframe is pushed into a corner under a window, the faded striped bedspread still messy with sleep. The walls are a deep royal blue, like we’ve been swallowed by a whale along with a rickety wardrobe, an old radio and a desk littered with utility bills and final notices.

I’m in Rowan’s room. Alone. With him.

I should have tidied.

Actually, I should’ve just told her

I’m busy.

Instead, I just hover at the door,

wondering whether it’s weird

to sit on my bed

with a girl who’s not really there.

‘So this is your room,’ I say.

‘Yeah, sorry about the mess.

Doing homework with Jonah and

haven’t got round to tidying yet.

What’s up?’

I’m still clutching my phone with my message on it asking him if we could chat. He jumped online so fast that I haven’t entirely worked out what I’m going to ask him yet. Plus, we’re both staring at his bed. And even though I stare at a bed all day every day, his is like a different world. A world of quiet. A world where his body warms with sleep. It’s very distracting.

I cough. ‘You don’t have any art up on the walls?’

I look around.

‘I don’t really spend much time in here.

Just a place to crash.’

Plus, all my pictures –

every single one –

are in Mam’s room.

‘Yeah, me neither,’ I lie.

I pull on the ends of my hair, scrunching my face up, because I can hear him working out a question to ask me and that’s not why I’m here.

‘Could-you-take-me-up-the-bell-tower-tomorrow?’ I say, fast, so it all comes out as one word.

The air leaves the room.

I sink down the wall.

‘Huh?’

‘The bell tower,’ I say, slower this time. ‘I heard your friend Charlie say that there might be a way up? Only I need to remember a – a friend – and it was the last thing he saw, so I thought perhaps –’

‘No.’

I say it louder than I planned, but.

‘No.

I’m not –

not up there.’

‘Oh,’ I whisper.

From the floor, things in his room look different. The soft world of the bed is far away. There’s dust gathering at the edges of the carpet. Dropped drawing pins point to the ceiling.

‘I didn’t mean … It’s just my friend. He – he died, you see. And I was hoping that –’

‘I ain’t going up there.’

I should be listening,

but my head is filled with

Mam.

Jonah.

That word.

Died died died.

‘That’s okay,’ I say quietly. ‘We don’t have to.’

I can hear him breathing like he’s been running. Or perhaps like I used to when I saw the bell tower beyond my curtains. But for me that always meant remembering Wesley – remembering that he’d never reach his finish line.