She stayed there throughout the whole sorrowful monologue as I explained the long dull recovery story to her. Of what it was like in the hospital, of all the CBT exercises I’ve been given, the side effects of my medication. I told her about Amy replacing me with Kim. Of how my parents treated me like I’m made of bone china on one hand, and slightly resentfully on the other. “The whole time, in family therapy sessions, Mum kept saying, ‘I don’t get it, we’ve given her everything, I don’t get it,’ like I’m just this ungrateful brat or something. She was so upset about her...I dunno...failure of a daughter, there was no space for me to feel how I needed to feel.”

“That’s horrid,” Jessica said. “It’s not like you’ve chosen this, have you?”

I shook my head so furiously that the tears flew off my face like paratroopers. “Of course not. My therapist says maybe that’s why I’m like this. That my mum, as she’s so...‘my-mum-like,’ I’ve learned maybe that there isn’t space for my emotions, so that’s why I numb out. But then I feel guilty, because she does really love me and tries her best with her mad daughter. It’s hell. Like, everyone at school thinks I’m crazy. I haven’t even kissed a boy yet, and nobody will come near me cuz they think I’m a psycho. I’ve lost my best friend. I’m fucking up my GCSEs. I’ve ruined my skin forever.”

“Can I see?” Jessica asked. Not out of curiosity, but something else. I pulled up the sleeve of my pajama top, though it would’ve been less intimate if I’d stripped naked. “My body is a mess,” I said, as I saw her take in the crosshatching of old white scars and new red ones across the light hair on my forearms. The hair sparser when the scar tissue was too solid to push through. “It’s all on my legs too...” I wiggled out of my pajama bottoms and Jessica gasped a little. I thought it was disgust at first, and was about to pull them back up in shame, when she said, “Oh, Fern, it looks so painful. You poor thing.”