It wasn’t that they didn’t care, they just didn’t get it. Me leaving home and becoming a student was a world they couldn’t imagine, let alone understand. They were sort of proud of their only child, but they were also bemused I hadn’t been content to stay on and help run the Tufted Duck bed and breakfast they owned on the edge of Lake Windermere.

‘So, tell me one fact that sums up all I need to know about your life so far.’

I took my first tentative sip of vodka and Coke, blinking as the burn melted into a warm buzz in my belly. ‘Up until last week, I shared a bedroom with my grandma.’

‘No!’

‘I had the top bunk.’

Charlie burst out laughing. ‘Perfect! That’s brilliant! It explains everything! Did you pack up her side of the wardrobe by mistake?’ She leant over and nudged my arm, to soften the tease. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love you already, but you look like you brought your old school uniform.’

Um, that’s because I did? It was the only jacket I owned, and I might need to look smart for an interview or something. I’d picked the school badge off, of course.

‘So, what’s your fact?’ A couple more sips gave me the courage to return the question.

Charlie thought for a while, twirling a strand of hair around one finger. ‘I ended up spending my first night here in the Aston Villa football team executive area in some nightclub. Only I lost my bag, with my phone and bank card in it. I’ve got about three days’ worth of food, if I’m careful. If the farm still had a landline I could call home and ask my parents to send me some money, but nobody bothers memorising mobile numbers, do they?’

‘Can’t you go to the bank and sort something out?’

She shrugged. ‘I can’t remember which bank it is. I just used the app.’

‘Okay. I think we can probably come up with something before you starve to death.’

‘Awesome!’ Charlie topped up our glasses for another toast.

And that about summed up the next three years of our lives, and a good few years after that. Charlie was my first real friend, and it turned out that despite her befriending everyone, I was hers, too. She careened through her first year, always breathless from rushing in late, if she managed to turn up at all. She joined half the clubs in the university, and left them all again. Sang in the musical one term, sprinted in the athletics club the next. Holidays and weekends were one adventure after another, whether that was a part-time job as a roadie for a rock band, or a day trip to London that evolved into a week in Paris. She lived for the moment, making the most of all the ones she could. Because, all too frequently, with shocking speed and devastating impact, the evil brain demons would come crashing in. She’d disappear for days, sometimes weeks, on one occasion two months at a time. Buried under her duvet, her colour extinguished by the darkness. Her eyes empty, words lifeless.