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Lizzie said. She opened her mouth to speak again but didn’t. We were quiet for a moment.
    “Mum doesn’t think he’s coming back, does she?” I said.
    “You know what she’s like. She hardly ever looks on the bright side.”
    “You don’t seem very optimistic yourself, Auntie Lizzie.”
    She sighed and took some photos out of the envelope. “I thought these photographs might cheer you up,” she said.
    Johnny dressed as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle carrying little old me in his green arms; Mum wearing boxing gloves, pretending to fight little Johnny, who was standing on the sofa at Nana’s house in Whiteslade; Mum, me, and Nana in our cozzies on the beach, pouting like beauty queens. There were a couple taken inside the little shed near Nana’s house that Johnny used as a gym, and I laughed at the one of me hanging off Johnny’s bicep, all the press cuttings and boxing quotes stuck to the wall behind us. There was another little sign hung on the wall, too, and Lizzie put on her glasses to read it. “God Bless This Mess.”
    “God bless it,” I said, staring at Johnny and me in the shed. “Can I keep this one?”
    “It’s yours,” Auntie Lizzie said. She kissed me on the head and left the room.
    That’s when I started to feel the weariness again. It’s the first sign. Your limbs go heavy. I got up from the bed and opened the window, but the fresh air didn’t pep me up much. Then I started to smell smoke, just as I had done before. It smells like the aftermath of a firework. I tried to shout. I wasn’t calling for help. I was just angry and afraid.
    I managed to get to the bed before my sight started to go.
    When I fully surfaced, I was on the floor, with my sketch pad open. An hour had passed. The drawing was sharper this time, and more disturbing. “Please, God,” I said quietly. In the picture, there was an old man lying still at the bottom of a bath, his mouth open, his perfect teeth bared, his lips dark, the water covering his open eyes. It was difficult to believe something so complicated had come from my own hands. The other sketches in my pad were pitiful in comparison. It was the best, and worst, thing I’d ever done. I threw it across the room and backed away as if the sketch pad were some poisonous creature.
    I knew that I needed help, and I knew there was only one person I could go to. Whether I wanted to or not.

The next day, I found him standing on the path outside his beach hut with a bunch of postcards. A group of women swarmed around him. They all wore white jackets with KELLY’S HEN written on the back in pink. They wore denim skirts and cowboy boots, and most of them had cowboy hats on strings around their necks. The goose bumps stood out on their fake-tanned legs.
    I took a long route round and hid behind Peter’s hut for a moment, watching. He was talking to Kelly, who was obviously the one getting married.
    “You just here for the weekend?” Peter said.
    “No, we’re doing a whole week,” Kelly said. “My last proper week with the girls. Thought we’d come to the seaside.”
    “Great,” Peter said. “Oh, look. These are the more naughty postcards.”
    He flicked through the pile of cards in his hands. I was close enough to see them. Kelly threw her head back and laughed. “Look at that one! Here, Treez, this guy looks like your Gav!”
    She showed the postcard to another woman, who cackled and said, “Yeah, chance would be a fine thing.”
    Peter and Kelly went through a few more postcards together. Most of them were photos of male strippers or breasts with faces painted on them. But one of them wasn’t. One of them was a painting of a street, with an ambulance and a woman lying on a stretcher.
    “This one’s a bit weird,” Kelly said. “Have you got any of Prince Harry?”
    Peter held the postcard in front of her for a moment before putting it to the bottom of the pile. I knew what it was. It was a message. I jumped from behind the hut and smashed the