‘Jez, Aminah! Quickly!’ Two other nurses, a man and a woman, come hurrying. Mam and Uncle Pete are nowhere to be seen, and I’m just standing next to the bed, feeling scared and useless.

They all say things like, ‘BP elevated one three five over sixty. Heavy perspiration. Heart rate one twenty, ECG spiking, temperature falling thirty-three degrees …’

Then the nurse called Jez leans over to look at Seb’s face. He touches the raised wound gently with a gloved hand. I can see already it’s going to be a big bruise, and I’m hoping that Seb is not in pain.

‘What is this? Who was here with him?’ says Jez to the others and they all lean in to look at it. Then the three of them turn to look at me.

He says, ‘What happened? Did he fall?’ Then, more slowly, ‘Did you touch him?’ It’s a moment before I realise what is going on.

They think I hit my brother! I would never do …

Okay, there was that time I hit him with the game controller, but that was ages ago …

I raise my hands. ‘No. No. No, no, no. I didn’t touch him. Honestly. It … it just came up on his face!’ My voice gets higher and louder. ‘Really! Why would I?’

If anyone answers that question, I miss it among the people coming and going – quickly but with purpose. Ten minutes later, Seb has been admitted to the intensive care unit.

His condition is being described as ‘involuntary comalike stasis with spontaneous facial and dermal contusion’. I suppose the doctors know what that all means, but I don’t. I hear a lot of, ‘Are you sure?’ and, ‘We need to wait for the results before we know,’ and stuff like that.

Back in the waiting room, Mam and Dad sit side by side while I stare out of the window again.

‘Malky,’ Dad starts, and Mam snaps back, ‘Tom. Don’t.’

He ignores her. ‘Malky. I know you’ve been violent to Seb in the past …’

‘Dad! Honestly!’ Mam knows that I wouldn’t have hit Seb. Well – not hard, anyway, and not in the face like that. They have both seen us fight plenty of times, Mam especially. Apart from the game-controller incident, I gave Seb a black eye once when I pushed him over and his face hit the corner of a low wall; I was grounded for a week after that. Seb once kicked me so hard in the mouth that he split my lip, but he wasn’t grounded, because I was pinning him down and Mam said it was my own stupid fault.