After that it was a blur, with large spots that he just didn’t remember at all. The weed, the alcohol, it was all such a bad idea. Feeling ashamed about Karen, maybe, wanting to drown the guilt and the tick of anxiety that he’d slept with her in Ali’s house, that she would find out, that their shame would ooze somehow between the walls of the building. Wanting to impress Callum, and show Bill he was still young and cool. Aware that Bill had wanted Ali for himself, more than Mike even, and a vague sense of shame there too, that he’d known he was leading her on at university, should have let her go. That he’d stood in the way of her and Bill. And he’d have ended it too, that night of the ball, or he’d have let it fizzle once he moved to London, knowing Ali didn’t have the money or connections to get there right away. Everything could have been so different, if he hadn’t needed her that night. If Martha had lived. Or who knew. She’d seemed to like him that night, laughing at his jokes, tossing her white-blonde hair. Maybe she’d have been his wife instead. Everyone would have seen him with this beautiful glowing woman. A different life. No Cassie or Benji. He couldn’t imagine that.

Voices above his bed. ‘I’m afraid—’

‘No change—’

‘Transplant list—’

He knew he had to wake up, but also that what he’d wake up to was not his life. Not the life he might have had, not at all. That had died over twenty years ago, on the lawn of an Oxford college.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Seven

‘Mum, of course I’ll do it! God, do you mean all this time I could have helped Dad and you didn’t tell me?’

My heart sank. There was no getting away from it – Mike was getting worse. I could see that even without the doctor’s grave words. His skin was the colour of ash, stubbed-out cigarettes. His eyes were shrunken in his shrivelled face; he’d aged twenty years in a week. Something had to be done – and that meant testing Cassie. When she saw him, she had started to cry, hunched over his bed.

‘I said I hated him.’

‘I know you didn’t mean it.’

‘I don’t hate him – I just, I don’t understand how he could do all these bad things.’

‘Neither do I. I think – we can’t know until he wakes up, and can explain it to us himself.’

‘But what if he doesn’t wake up?’ Her face was red and shiny. ‘That could happen, right? He’s really sick!’