Jack didn’t hang around for a reply. He slipped into the bedroom, closed the door behind him and plunged himself into the pitch black. He found the bed, and collapsed onto it with such force that the dust on the duvet leapt into the air like a swarm of disturbed flies.

This isn’t home. It’s unfamiliar. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s missing all the little things that made life in the abandoned countryside tolerable, like electronic games and chessboards and our own little farm. Even the right people aren’t here. Most of them are dead and we don’t even have a Memorial Wall for them here .

And on top of all that, this is one of the things in my life that I absolutely cannot afford to get even the slightest bit wrong…

I’m scared here. I always will be.

Before Jack knew it, he was in tears. He was not expecting actual tears – just the below-the-surface bubbling of emotions clawing their way towards his eyes – but the tears came regardless.

It was absolutely the wrong moment for the silhouette of Gracie to walk through the door, but she did anyway.

Two interruptions in less than a minute. Almost like the universe did not want him to rest.

‘I’m cold, Jack,’ she said.

‘Me too.’

There was a hint in her voice that she wanted something else, but Jack couldn’t translate it. After a momentary silence, she spoke again.

‘Could we… warm each other up?’

Oh bloody hell Gracie, don’t put me in this position…

‘You know? With… kissing?’

I took the hint, Gracie. Even I’m perceptive enough for that one.

In one of the most awkward and uncomfortable moments of Jack’s adolescence, Gracie sat down on the bed next to him. The touch of her hand felt like a miniature electric shock; one which he felt guilty for feeling.

He had spent much of the last year avoiding Gracie’s advances. But in Lemsford they had spent an afternoon alone, which had started with them making some kind of connection and had ended with them saving each other’s lives. Jack had since been wrestling with the idea of telling her the truth, and the hand against his side persuaded him the problem was not going away. It was better to get it over with, and that moment was the best opportunity to do so: not least because he had reached his full mental capacity for sadness anyway, so the ordeal wouldn’t make him feel any worse.

‘I’m not going to kiss you, Gracie.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t. And not after today either.’

‘I can teach you how it works if you like—’

‘No, Gracie. I’m sorry, I really am, but the answer’s no. I…’

He took a deep breath, then finished his sentence after coughing out the dust that invaded his lungs.