I shake my head, but I make myself stand up, my legs shivering a bit and my hand holding the wall for support. I walk, though, forward towards the bedroom door and out on to the landing, where I can see into my old box bedroom that now belongs to Mum and Dad, and the family bathroom I no longer use. And I can see the stairs tumbling down to the floor below.

‘Come join me,’ she says again.

And I think about what it would be like to walk down them, slip on a pair of sandals and go running with strangers, just because I could.

I miss a breath.

The phone drops from my hand and I watch Cecelia’s face on the screen as it hits each step with a

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Standing on the landing = 2 spoons

Mum comes out of her room and catches me just in time. ‘Alice! Not near the stairs!’

I gulp big glugs of air as she helps me back into bed.

No, not near the stairs. I still have the bruise from where I fainted walking to the en suite last week and it would be so much worse to fall all that way, even if I would get to see the other rooms downstairs, even for just a moment.

I get my breath back and watch Manta in his four-walled tank over her shoulder, dark like a shadow until the light hits him just right and he shines gold. And as Mum makes the bed go back down again, I tell her that Manta and I are the same. That my body may be stuck inside this bedroom-tank, but I’m free to shine a light wherever I please. The world is packed full of beautiful things with hidden gold, if only you look at them in

the

right

light

and

What was I saying?

I’m sorry, I seem to have lost …

No, no, I’m not tired.

It’s my body.

It’s

stopped.

6

Alice

And now I am dreaming.

I’m floating in an endless ocean and all around me is a deep royal blue. And I feel weightless. Calm. Like I’m moving towards something, caught on an invisible tide that’s tunnelling under the waves and taking me somewhere.

But then I twirl. And below me I see rocks jutting out of the seabed. Rocks with shards of glass and splinters of carbon fibre glittering between them.

I struggle. I gulp water and the tide spins me round and I lose all sense of up and down. And suddenly the seabed is the sky and above me is Mum. Dad. Cecelia. All paddling at the top, their legs like sunbeams that can’t reach down to me in the dark.

I stretch my fingers out to them. I kick with every ounce of energy I have.

But still. I sink.

7

Alice