I assume that’s it, but she makes me sit still while she drowns me in dry shampoo and burns me with hair curlers.

‘I’m done, I’m done! Now go, clear off.’

She grins and kisses my forehead this time. ‘Knock him dead. Not literally. It is on camera after all.’

I smile at her as she almost cartwheels out.

‘Cecelia!’ I call as she leaves. ‘Thank you.’

She blows me a kiss, and closes the door.

I check my watch. I have an hour and a half before I’m due to speak to Rowan – between his afternoon work shift and picking Jonah up from school. It’s enough time to take off the awful clothes Cecelia made me wear and squeeze myself into my black birthday dress. And try to let my mind empty completely, before it gets packed full of worries again.

At two forty, I take a moment to breathe. Check my spoons. Take out my laptop.

I open the same video-call app that we used to call Dr Rahman. But instead of choosing her name, I copy Rowan’s number instead.

And I turn my camera. On.

My insides leap seeing my own face in the corner. Looking strange, but not in a bad way. I steady the laptop on a pile of pillows so behind me he’ll be able to see the window. The flowers Mum brought me that are bent in prayer.

And me. Here. Alive.

I grip my laptop, tight. And click.

Calling Rowan …

64

Rowan

And now I am standing at the edge of the sea as the sun hole-punches through a hazy film of cloud. The water tosses and churns, raking in stones from the beach and coughing them back out again.

My insides somersault, both with how beautiful it looks and with the disappointment of not seeing Rowan’s face. He must still have his phone in the harness round his chest.

‘Hi,’ I say nervously.

Alice.

Her voice whispers through my earphones.

‘Hey.

So – how was your busy time?’

Was she even doing anything?

Or was she just

avoiding me?

‘It was … eventful,’ I say.

On my lips are the same sort of lies I used to tell Cecelia. Where I’d blur the edges of virtual living and real life, to make it seem as though I was off doing impossible things. But that’s just the thing, isn’t it?

Diving under seas. Floating through space. Going to a party.

They’re not real.

I scrunch my eyes. Squeeze my fists.

‘Could you – could you turn the camera round? To face you.’

I almost want to say

NO.

That it’s not fair that I keep

giving her so much of me

when I have no idea if she’s even alive.

But also – it’s Alice.

And a bigger part of me wants to keep

giving her everything.

I pick up the phone

and turn it.