‘I don’t want Lauren here, she’ll stress me out.’ I do kind of want Lauren here, because Lauren is as much comfort as Mum in many ways, but Lauren also makes me tense. She’ll say something inappropriate. She’ll flirt with doctors and nurses. She’ll go off somewhere and not come back for ages. She’ll be loud and boisterous and disturb the other people in the room, or maybe she won’t do any of these things, but there’s the possibility, the unpredictability, the tension that comes with being around Lauren. And then she’ll need to stay at my house, I don’t want her to see…I don’t want her to see or to know, what I have here. My world is still too small and fragile.

‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’ Mum says.

‘Yes. I’ll be fine.’

‘I’ll call you again a bit later okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Love you, sweetheart.’

I hang up and, without warning, there are tears in my eyes. She’s not coming. I pretend I urgently need to fiddle with the remote-control thingy that operates the bed, but really I need a distraction to stop the tears. My ovary hurts and I’ve never been in a hospital before and I’m scared of the pain meds they’ve given me and I want my mum.

‘Brooke?’ Jesse is at the door.

‘Oh, hi,’ I say, pinching my arm under the blanket to push my tears back. ‘You’re here. I mean, you’re still here.’

‘I’m still here. Are you okay?’ He sounds really worried. He probably thinks I’ve been given some horrible terminal diagnosis.

‘I’m fine,’ I say, and quickly wipe my eyes, swallowing hard, clearing my throat, using my most upbeat voice. ‘It’s a…a ruptured ovarian cyst!’

That was maybe a little too upbeat. Especially because cyst is a very ugly word, when you say it out loud.

‘Oh, okay. Is that serious?’

‘Sometimes. But they think mine is fine. I can go home soon.’

‘Good, good.’ He looks awkward.

There was an ease between us when things felt urgent, but now, with me in a hospital gown and in a bed, with a diagnosis and a cyst—well, a former cyst—and him hovering there, it feels strange. We are not friends. This is way too much. We’ve leveljumped from nemeses to hospital buddies. No. I need to find a way to roll this back.

‘You waited all this time?’ I ask. It’s been hours since I left him. My heart is softening, but I’m in there, building the barriers back up as fast as they crumble.

‘Oh yeah. I went to the canteen and had a coffee, and then I, um, I went to the, um, gift shop.’ He’s holding a bag with the gift-shop logo on it, but he doesn’t offer any more information.