Eventually, the rest of them all head off for breakfast, but Seb’s already had his, and I’m just not hungry. So the two of us stay in his little room next to the intensive care unit. He’s not hooked up to anything. He’s sitting in his bed, propped up on fat pillows. There’s only one thing I want to know.

‘What happened to you?’ I say. ‘When you were asleep, and you were dreaming, and tied to that stake, and being beaten …’

Seb’s eyes look up as if he’s retrieving a memory.

‘Oh yeah,’ he says. ‘That wasn’t nice. But …’

‘Wasn’t nice?’ I am amazed. ‘You mean … you don’t remember it all?’

He thinks again. ‘Not really. Not all of it.’

‘Do you remember the mammoth?’ I start laughing. ‘Naked Mola?’

‘Naked what?’

I realise that he has never even met Susan’s grandmother.

‘Thing is, Malky – this was your dream … wasn’t it? I was just … in it, somehow. Now it feels just like it was a nightmare, you know? Not nice, but …’

I look again at his wrists. His bad dream is retreating from his memory like his wounds, and I could not be more relieved. I’m standing over his bed and I don’t know why I do this thing, maybe for the first time ever, but I kind of fall forward and gather my little brother in my arms and squeeze, and he squeezes back.

‘I love you, Seb,’ I say, and he laughs and says, ‘Yeah, whatever.’

Then he quickly adds, ‘Hey, did you see the wound on my thigh?’

‘No. What is it?’

He pulls back the bedsheet. ‘The doctors are a bit worried. Here.’ He lowers the waistband of his pyjamas to expose his thigh and the top of his buttock. ‘Can you see? There. Look closer. Closer!’ I bend over until my nose is almost touching his white bum. I still can’t see anything.

That’s when he lets off a huge fart, right in my face, and turns nearly breathless and purple with laughter.

I think it’s Seb’s way of saying, ‘I love you too.’

Chapter 86

Later that day, Seb’s discharged from hospital and Dad’s heading back to Middlesbrough. He and Mam are over by his car while Seb and I wait on the same wall where I had been just a couple of days ago. Seb’s in his goalie top, of course.

Seb nudges me. ‘Look at Mam and Dad!’ he says, and when I do I see they are laughing!

Okay, not exactly laughing, but Dad has said something with a smile, and Mam has smiled back at him. Then she nods warmly and puts her hand on his forearm and keeps it there for a little while, then she moves away, beckoning us to follow her to Uncle Pete’s car.