I haven’t seen my dad, apart from on FaceTime, for months. He’s ‘trying to get his life together,’ says Mam, who does her best not to be mean about him to me and Seb, but I know it upsets her as well.

He drove the hour from Middlesbrough, where he lives now, as soon as he heard that Seb was in hospital. His girlfriend Melanie isn’t with him, which I’m quite pleased about. I mean, she’s okay – I just prefer Dad without her. He’s got a beard now with grey bits in it, and new jeans and expensive glasses. (To be honest, they just look like ordinary glasses to me, but I heard Mam on the phone to Uncle Pete saying, ‘bloody designer glasses,’ so I guess they are.)

Mam has stayed with Seb in the hospital. The staff brought in a wheeled bed for her to sleep on tonight so she could be next to him.

Dad is changing the car’s gears with too much force, jamming the stick into place angrily. His mouth is clamped into a firm line like he’s trying his hardest not to cry. He used to cry a lot when he was living with us, but that’s when he was poorly. He’s a lot better now.

‘The worst thing is the not knowing,’ he says.

Not knowing is hard. Hard? It’s agony. I tried to explain everything about our dreams, about our adventures in the Stone Age, to Dr Nisha. It didn’t go well.

Dr Nisha had sat down next to me and put her pen and clipboard and iPad down as a sign that she was giving me all of her attention. She said to Mam and Dad, ‘I’d like a word with Malcolm alone, if I may?’ and they went to get something to eat.

We were in the beige room with the hard sofas and the Narnia mural, which I’d been staring at for ages and decided that I didn’t like.

‘So, Malcolm,’ she began, ‘you share a room with your brother, right?’

I nodded.

‘And you were the one that discovered that he would not wake?’

I nodded again.

‘Roughly what time was this?’

I had told her this before, but I repeated it. ‘About six o’clock. This morning.’

‘All right. And what were you doing immediately before this all happened?’ Her tone was soft and gentle. I looked at her eyes and they were large and trusting. Should I tell her? Should I bother?

I’s not like I hadn’t given this any thought. In fact, I had barely thought of anything else. What would I say? How about the truth?