In some part of my brain I knew it was disgusting that Dr Honeycott had made me feel the way he had. And in some part of my person I knew he was wrong. That Nassim and I had only responded to something that was so wrapped up in every atom of us, every touch, every look; eons of evolution and instinct had made it so. Nothing, nothing about it had felt wrong, because nothing about it was wrong. But as I’d left Dr Honeycott’s clinic that small part of me, the part that contained all my righteous anger, all my defensive bravado, all sense of my own goodness, melted away. I felt exactly the way he thought I should feel – shit and ashamed and dirty and unworthy.

Barefoot on the cold tiles of the laundry I changed out of my pyjamas and into my clothes for the trip. I wrote the note for Mum and left it on her pillow. I felt guilty about leaving her too. But I decided not to feel that. She didn’t deserve it. Not at all. Mum could read that note, after what she’d done, after who she’d been, after the way she’d treated Nassim and me, and she could weep and cry and drink and call me all sorts of things and try to manipulate me back home, and I could decide to not even care. I would decide that. But Nassim . . .

I’d planned to leave a note for Nassim too. Something beautiful. Something to make him feel loved, because he was. He was loved. I’d never told him. So the note would say something that did all that, but which was also final, which left no room for questions or negotiations.

I held the pen, but it froze in my hand. It stopped uselessly there. The nib was resting on the blank page but the right words stayed resolutely in the ink tube inside. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t write whatever it was that was the right thing to write. It didn’t feel like anything was the right thing to write.

I dropped the pen and wheeled my case to the door and was about to heft my backpack on my back and walk right out, but I just had to risk it one more time. Maybe I would do it. Maybe I would wake him.

I went back upstairs and looked at him there, lying in my bed. Just looked at him. At the baby-softness of his brow; at the warm hard shape of his shoulder.

It hurt. Already it hurt. It hurt so bad and so hard that for a moment I thought I was going to do it, to shake his shoulder, to start to talk.

But I couldn’t do it.

I was ashamed of myself. And ashamed to admit it. Stalemate.

And then, I didn’t know what I was doing, but it seemed the only way to force something to happen, to force myself out of that door: I carefully and quietly lifted my memento mori off the wall and took it with me. And then I was out on the street with it, walking awkwardly, lugging both it and my backpack and dragging my suitcase, already late for the only bus that would get me to the train and the coach that would ferry me to my fresh start. To my new life. Away from these clouds to a wide open sky.