‘I didn’t mean you couldn’t be happy, I mean that …’ She sighs and looks at me. Properly. ‘I mean that I’m sorry. I mean that I should have pulled my head out of my own arse for just one minute and actually paid attention. I would never have asked …’

I pick at my nails. ‘I don’t mind you asking. It’s nice to be invited to things. It’s just that … it’s just that I can’t …’

She sits down on the bed. ‘I know.’

I shake my head. ‘I need to say it.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your birthday party, Cecelia. I just … I just didn’t have the spoons.’

She laughs and I notice that she’s crying. ‘It was only a party. It was weeks ago, anyway.’

I hold her hands. Tight. ‘I should have said it back then. I hid it from you.’

She climbs into bed with me and I smell green tea and climbing walls and Living and I want to hold on to it, tight.

‘You’re such a mongoose. You don’t have to hide shit from me, you know. You could have just said. I’d have understood.’

I shake my head. ‘Like you hid, sitting alone at lunch?’

She freezes. ‘Yeah, well. Maybe I’ve been lying about stuff, too. The others at school are dicks, Al. Seriously. Not one of those losers turned up to my birthday party, you know?’ She lifts up her head. ‘Sometimes I just feel so invisible, it’s easier to pretend –’

I nod. ‘Pretend that things are different? So I wouldn’t leave you, too.’ Now I’m crying. ‘But I did!’

‘Oh Christ.’ She rubs the tears from my eyes so her nails dig into my eyebrows. ‘I ran away from you, not the other way round. And I only ran because I felt like shit. Real mature, I know, but seeing you that ill … I guess I realized what an absolute tool I was for not realizing that my BFF is ILL. Not, like, a bit down. And not, like, just needs a push to get back out there. But, like, ILL.’ She stops rubbing my face. ‘I don’t even know what you’re ill with!’

I laugh. ‘Well, that makes two of us.’

She swears again and pulls the duvet up and over us so we’re surrounded by darkness. And I can hear her breath and my breath and they’re together and the same.

‘Okay. So how about this, then? How about you tell me, right now, the stuff you do know, yeah? And how about you tell me what I can do – as your friend and all-round favourite person – to help?’

And so I tell her.

I explain about the spoons and what it means when I drop them.

I explain about the doctor’s appointments and the new drugs I’m on.