‘No,’ I say, a little too quickly, putting my phone far away from her.

‘Oh my God, you are! You’re texting someone and you didn’t even tell me!’ She pokes me in the ribs. ‘All the boring doctor shit you talk about, and you withhold actual exciting information from me?’ I glare at her and she smiles. ‘Who is it, then? Oh! Is it that boy you sent to spy on me at lunch? Because, even though I was threatening him and everything, I was doing so while thinking he was hot.’

I sigh. She’s looking at me in the same way as those puppies Dad borrowed.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Okay, but if I tell you, you need to promise not to freak out on me and make it weird, okay?’

She mimes a halo around her head. ‘Would I ever?’

‘Yes.’

She grins.

I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Try not to drop too many spoons by telling her.

‘His name is Rowan.’

She bounds up on to her knees, almost bouncing me off the bed and thumping me on top of my head.

‘I knew it, I knew it! The hot one!’

‘Cecelia!’ I shout.

Wrestling away from Cecelia = 1 spoon

She stops and sinks down to grab my shoulders.

‘How? I mean – how? I thought you didn’t talk to your streamers in case they send you testicle pics?’

‘That’s not the reason,’ I tut. ‘He’s someone Mum is working with. He’s using his phone and we got talking …’

She shrieks again. ‘Have you met him?’

I shake my head.

‘But you want to?’

I look around at my bed and the flannel on the radiator I used to wash myself earlier. ‘I can’t, though, can I?’

She shrugs. ‘Why not? I mean – okay – so you might not be able to walk to the park and meet him or whatever. But surely he can come round here?’

‘Oh no, no, no … he can’t see …’ The pills on the bedside table. The peeling wallpaper. The walls I live in.

Cecelia squints at me. ‘He does know, though, doesn’t he? You did tell him you can’t, like, see him outside?’

I bite my lip and she bangs her head into the pillow.

‘Oh. My. God. Al! What is it with you and keeping this a secret?!’

I sit myself up. ‘You don’t understand. He thinks I’m just like him and it’s … it’s …’

‘Fake, is what it is.’

I go to argue. But in the end I just sink back down inside the covers again. Because she’s right. It is fake. He wants me, but he has no idea who I really am.

I pull the duvet over my head and she ducks down into it, so we’re back inside our own world again.