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disappeared. There are hundreds of dogs running free all over the Heath, all except for one huge black dog, like a bear, plodding slowly up the hill—Nana’s Newfoundland, Claude. Beside him is my Nana Josie in her cherry-red crocheted hat and long trailing scarf. She smiles at me. Piper starts to bark, pulling the leash as hard as he can to get to her. She waves to me and climbs up onto Claude’s back. He breaks into a trot. Now he pounds toward us with his great big bear paws. Just at the moment when I reach for Nana’s hand, Claude’s front paws leave the ground…one last kick with his back legs and he is flying. Nana’s hat slips off her head and her long black hair streams behind her like the tail of a kite. Piper yaps like crazy and leaps off the ground to catch her.
    Now I am running with Piper, flapping my arms hard so I can fly after her. I’m hurtling down Parliament Hill, flapping, pushing off with my feet, but no matter how hard I try I can’t kick the ground away, and that’s the moment when I see him: Jidé Jackson walking closer and closer up the hill, with his arms outstretched toward me.

    â€œYou were thrashing around a bit,” Mum explains. She is lying next to me in my bed.
    â€œI was trying to fly. Me and Piper were trying to catch up with Nana,” I tell her, still out of breath.
    â€œWhere was Nana?” Mum asks.
    â€œFlying away on Claude’s back.”
    â€œJust a dream,” Mum says, like in The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy wakes up and the whole story is make-believe, even the nightmare bits. I wish it was—just a dream—except for the end. I wish I could click my red shiny heels together and make it all go away…the blood, the coffin…make it all go away…except for Jidé Jackson.

    11:59 p.m. I wait for the last minute of my twelfth birthday to tick away before I take off my new watch.
    Maybe if I don’t wear it time will slow down and things will go back to normal. Since I strapped it to my wrist this morning something strange has happened to time. I can hear it beating, all day long, under the surface of everything.

Sunday, 1 May
    â€œWhat’s that?” asks Nana, pointing to a spot on my cheek that’s mushroomed like magic overnight. It’s just as I thought…this oozy red spot is doing its best to blow my cover.
    â€œOh! Darling Mira. Such a shame…and you’ve always had such perfectly peachy skin,” Nana exclaims, poking the head of my painful pustule and making me flinch away from her.
    My mum is shooting Nana a “Do you have to?” look, not that Nana notices.
    â€œIt all starts to change from now on. It’ll be boyfriends and periods next. You know it might not be long, Uma,” Nana announces, giving me the once over, before turning to Mum. “They’re starting earlier and earlier these days, you know. It’s something to do with their weight. How old were you?”
    Great! Now she’s talking about my weight as if I’m not even in the room. I know every detail about periods. There is nothing that my mum hasn’t told me about why you have periods, how they can make you feel, and, yes, I know when Mum started her period—she was twelve like me, and Nana Josie was fourteen. Aunty Abi was thirteen. And this is probably the moment I should tell them, right now, except that Nana would probably get dressed up and do some ancient ceremonial dance around the room, or light a candle or something to celebrate me becoming a woman . So I don’t tell because that’s what a diary’s for, isn’t it?
    â€œIt’s hard to believe I’ve been buying art materials from Dusty for half a century,” sighs Nana as we munch on leftover birthday cake. Even Nana’s tucking in today.
    â€œLet’s see how the old boy’s getting on.”
    Nana stands up and shakes the crumbs off her lap.
    She’s determined to make