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could think of something comforting to say. Grief sucked. That didn’t quite cut it.
    “Which hospital is he in?”
    “The big one in Exeter.”
    Which meant it was serious. “They’ll look after him,” I said, hoping it was consoling.
    “They said … last night—” Petra gulped. “They said his head was split open. They said his brains were all over the pavement.”
    “Who said that?”
    “Everyone.”
    “Well, everyone obviously didn’t see him. I did. And there were no brains on the pavement, I promise you.”
    “You saw him?”
    “On my way home. They were just putting him in the ambulance.”
    “How did he look?”
    “A bit battered,” I admitted. No point in going into the grisly details, even if they weren’t anything like as bad as what she’d heard already. “He’ll be OK, Petra.”
    “I hope so.”
    “Try not to worry. There’s nothing you can do except wait. And be there for Beth when she needs you.”
    Petra nodded and blew her nose. “I’m all right.”
    “Come and help me sort out Ella’s room. I’ve got to make the bed and I think it needs dusting. The last time I was in there a giant cobweb attacked me. The spider must have been the size of my head.”
    “Which room is it? The one at the top?”
    “The one with the sea view.” We grinned at each other. The sea view was a longstanding family joke. When the house was built, Port Sentinel had been more or less undeveloped and the whole bay had been visible. Now, a tiny gap between houses was all that was left. It amounted to two inches of water that you could only really pick out on a bright sunny day, when it glittered. Still, it counted, and it was the only bedroom apart from mine on the top floor. I thought Ella would love it.
    I was wrestling with the duvet and Petra was running a duster over the windowsill when Tilly came in. She had a vase of branches from the garden that looked like the work of a super-expensive florist. Typical Tilly to be able to make something out of nothing, but then she was a real, proper artist, painting portraits of animals that sold for mouthwatering amounts. I’d inherited my father’s logical mind rather than the Leonard flair for art, and it was that more than anything else that made me feel like an outsider, three months on from arriving in Port Sentinel.
    “I thought your friend might like these.”
    “She’ll love them,” I said truthfully.
    “Petra, Beth is downstairs. I didn’t like to ask, but is everything OK?”
    “Nope.” Petra dropped the duster and ran, leaving me to fill in the details for Tilly.
    Her forehead wrinkled. “Oh, the poor darling. I must go and make something for them. Stew, or something they can reheat. Vegetarian lasagne.” She wandered out of the room, on a mission. “Moussaka…” floated back from the landing.
    Tilly just loved having someone to mother, I thought, which brought me back to Will. It was no wonder she had practically adopted him. I knew she missed him too. I had never spoken to her or Mum about him, despite gentle questions from both of them separately and together. It was too painful to talk about it, and too complicated. It was my fault that Will had been sent away, when all was said and done. I couldn’t have said whether the guilt was worse than the pain of missing him. All I knew was that I’d better keep my misery to myself.
    Which was a cheery thing to think about when you were fighting the most evil duvet imaginable. For roughly the hundredth time I discovered I’d put the wrong corner in the wrong bit of the cover so it didn’t fit. I ripped it out and threw it on the floor, then jumped up and down on it.
    OK, so it wasn’t the most mature thing I’d ever done, but it made me feel better, briefly. And call it coincidence if you like, but when I picked the duvet up and forced it into the cover again, it ended up fitting perfectly, first time.
    I’d finished tidying up there and was in my own room, lying on the bed reading,