I walk into the kitchen to see Dad and Isaac updating the wall planner on the wall. Like the one in his bedroom, it shows Isaac all the things that will be happening this week so that he can be prepared. Unlike the one in his bedroom, this wall planner charts all of Mum’s hospital appointments so that Isaac knows when she won’t be at home. And so that he can start to understand that she’s really, truly ill.

Ever since that horrible evening when Mum and Dad told us that Mum was properly ill I’ve been waiting for Isaac to have a total meltdown, but it hasn’t happened. I asked Dad about it the other day and he said that he doesn’t think Isaac is letting the information through – that it’s a bit like him closing a gate in his mind to stop him from thinking about things that will upset him.

Lucky Isaac, I said. I wish I didn’t have to think about it either.

Since I said this, Dad has been working really hard to keep telling Isaac about how Mum is doing and what each appointment is for. I think he’s worried that Isaac will lose it for good if he doesn’t start talking about it with us soon.

I grab some cornflakes and take a look at the new schedule. Mum is going to be pretty busy this week – she has hospital appointments almost every day.

‘Can you make sure that you’re home on time after school today?’ Dad asks me, washing a couple of apples and putting them in our lunchboxes. ‘I need to drive Mum back from seeing the doctor and we’ll be a bit late.’

‘Sure,’ I say. Isaac’s special school is quite a few miles away so he has to have a taxi there and back – which is a good thing because it means that he’s never the first person home at the end of the day. ‘How’s Mum feeling today?’

‘Not so good,’ says Dad. ‘She didn’t really get any sleep again last night.’

I look over at him, worried. He doesn’t sound his normal, cheery self this morning.

‘But the doctors will be able to help her, won’t they?’ I ask. ‘Just tell them to give her something that’ll help her sleep. Alice said her mum has pills to help her go to sleep all the time.’

‘Yes, well – it’s not quite the same thing, I’m afraid,’ says Dad, handing me my lunch.

‘But there’s still hope, isn’t there?’ I say. ‘You said that technology is improving constantly and that it’s simply a question of trying everything until something works.’

Dad doesn’t say anything, just looks at me and runs his fingers through his hair. ‘Dad? You said that, remember?’

‘I remember, Liv. The thing is – your mum’s tried nearly everything now.’

I take a huge breath of relief. ‘Well, there you go then! Nearly everything isn’t everything, is it? Make sure they do everything they can, Dad – you have to!’

‘I will, Liv. And your mum’s determined to fight this thing – and you know what she’s like when she sets her mind to something.’

I love Dad for trying to lighten the mood, but I can feel that something has changed. My heart starts to race and my armpits feel prickly with sweat.

‘Dad?’ I ask him, but I can’t finish my sentence. I don’t even know what the rest of the sentence might be, just that it’s so bad I can’t find the words to say it or even think it.

Dad moves round the kitchen table and squeezes my shoulder. ‘We need to sit down, Liv – have a chat.’

‘No!’ I say, the word coming out louder than I expected. ‘It’s fine, Dad – really. You don’t need to worry – I’ll be here for Isaac after school.’

My gaze falls again on the wall planner with Mum’s hospital appointments crowding out the rest of the month. Dad follows my eyes to see where I’m looking and squeezes my shoulder again.

‘We’ll talk when I get back later,’ he tells me. He tries to smile at me but while his mouth turns up at each corner, his eyes don’t seem to get the message, and when I leave the kitchen he is still standing there, looking at the wall planner with his pretend, everything’s-going-to-be-OK Dad smile on his face. I can feel that I need to make doubly certain that I am here when Isaac gets home from school. And I can feel that it is time to stop acting like a little girl and take some responsibility.

The first thing that I do with my newfound mature and responsible self is to bunk off school. It is so ludicrously easy to do that I can’t believe I haven’t ever done it before. I say goodbye to Mum and Dad and walk down to our corner where Alice is waiting for me. I’m going to tell her my plan and ask her to cover for me at school. To be honest, I think she’ll agree to just about anything I ask her right now. I told her about Mum the other day – she cried for ages. All this week she’s made sure that Moronic Louise doesn’t get anywhere near me – and school’s been a little bit easier now that she knows. We haven’t actually talked about it since, but it feels a bit like I’ve got some back-up now.

‘Hey, Liv.’ Alice is already waiting at the corner, waving at me. I walk towards her and when I reach her I drop my bag on the pavement and lean back against the wall. Alice looks at me in surprise but doesn’t say a word, just drops her own bag and leans back next to me, one foot resting on the wall behind us.

‘I can’t go to school,’ I tell her.

‘Why? What’s happened?’ Alice is panicking and her voice comes out all high and breathless. ‘Liv? Has your mum –’

‘No!’ I say, wrapping my arms across my body and shivering a little. ‘Nothing’s changed.’

‘Thank God for that.’ Alice slumps a little and I can tell how scared she is. ‘I thought –’

‘I know,’ I tell her and we stand in silence for a minute, watching the cars go past.

‘Life is so totally rubbish,’ Alice says eventually. ‘I never knew it could be this unfair. I just can’t stop thinking about your mum. Why can’t you go to school?’

‘It’s wasting time,’ I say. I’m not sure how else to tell her what I’m feeling, but I just know there are far more important things to do today than go to school.

‘Are you going to stay at home with your mum?’ asks Alice, and I know that she wants to understand; that she’s trying to make sense of what is happening. I don’t have the energy to explain that Mum will be at the hospital most of today and that I feel like I’m missing something. I can’t put into words how it felt when Dad said we needed to ‘have a talk’.

‘Yes,’ I tell her. It seems easier somehow, and I’m not completely sure myself why I know that I have to stay at home today.

‘OK,’ says Alice. ‘Give your mum a big hug from me. Tell her my mum said to just ask if she needs anything. Tell her –’ But her voice chokes up and she stops talking, rubbing at her eyes and trying to hide the tears that are welling up inside them.

‘I’ll tell her. Cover for me at school?’

Alice nods and gives me a hug, and then runs down the road while I go the other way and nip down the alleyway that is at the back of our garden. Normally I’ll do anything to avoid this alley. Nothing bad has ever happened there as far as I know, but it makes me think about death and dog poo – not my favourite subjects. I know that Mum and Dad are meant to be leaving quite early so I hang around at the end of the alley for a bit, enjoying the early morning sun, until I reckon they’ll have gone and then I leave the sunshine and head down the shadowy pathway.

The wall is quite high, so I have a bit of trouble judging which bit of the alley is next to our garden. When I think I’m close I drag a dustbin up to the wall – good job that (a) it’s bin day, and (b) the bin men have already emptied the dustbins – and stand on it. Well, I say that like it’s easy. Actually, it’s quite difficult to stand up on a bin. They’re always doing it on telly but on reflection, I think they must film that bit with stunt doubles because it takes me ages to balance myself on top. And then, when I can finally see over the wall, I see that it’s not even our garden – I’m still three doors down, about to jump into Mrs Green’s immaculate flower bed. She’s always been really lovely to me but even so, I don’t think she’d be very happy if she spotted me trampling all over her plants.

I get down (about as easy as getting up there) and repeat the whole charade – this time in the right place. Bizarrely, clambering over the garden wall is the easy bit. I just sort of pull myself up on to my tummy and then slowly tip my whole body over. Not very elegant – no points for my dismount, but effective all the same.

I pick myself up and brush myself down, and then creep round the back of Dad’s studio and let myself in with the key that he imaginatively hides under a flowerpot.

There, on my bench, are the rubbish photographs that I took on my birthday. I’ve gathered up photos that I took months ago with my old camera too – they’re all here. I look at them now, choosing quickly and putting them into two piles. When I’m done, I sweep the second pile into a drawer and then, taking the rest, I spread them out all over Dad’s huge table.

Now I can take my time, picking up each image and looking at it properly, holding it to the light and turning it this way and that. I discard a few more pictures and I sort the rest into another two groups. When I’m done, I stand back and look.

Staring up at me from the table is Mum. Lots and lots of photographs of my mum. I gather up the first collection and flick through. In one frame she’s got her arm round Dad and is laughing at something he’s said. In another, Isaac is pushing her on a swing in the park and her hair is fanning out behind her and her legs are straight out in front of her, and she’s smiling and smiling. A third shows her sitting at the kitchen table, glasses pushed up on her head and a frown of concentration on her face, as she writes an article that is probably due in the next day. What all of these pictures have in common is they show how Mum lives every day – like it really, really matters.

The next lot of photos are more recent. They’re the photos that I took of my birthday tea and in the few weeks before my birthday, and they still show my mum – but she’s not the same. She’s still laughing and hugging in these pictures but she looks so different. I can’t believe I haven’t noticed before. How come I can see it on a photo but not in real life?

I put all the pictures back on the table and spread them out again. Frantically, I start to order them chronologically, trying to remember when I took each one. When they’re all lined up in order, I step back and look at the timeline I’ve created. I look from left to right, as my mum seems to shrink in size. The photos on the left show a mum who was easy to hug, who was never overweight but was definitely cuddly. They show a mum who was quick to get mad and quick to forgive and quick to laugh at everything life threw at her.

The photos on the right side of my timeline show a new mum. This one is thin and could do with eating some chocolate; this one wants to hug you but you worry that you might break her, she feels so brittle. This mum seems to be watching everything that goes on around her instead of joining in, and she looks like that is killing her.

I turn away from the table and stifle a sob. I do not want to cry right now. Tears would be totally pointless. How did I not notice, I rage inside my head. I thought she was getting better. I thought this would all be over – I knew it might take a bit of time, but I thought we’d get there in the end. I’ve even found myself getting cross with her, wishing that she wasn’t spoiling everything by being unwell.

I picture our wall planner in the kitchen and see how Mum has been visiting the hospital more and more frequently. The evidence was there, right in front of me all the time. All I had to do was look but I chose not to. Maybe I’m more like Isaac than I realized. I wonder if one day, these photographs will be the only evidence that she was ever here, that she ever actually existed.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been in the studio but I’m suddenly really freezing. It’s weird cos it looks like it’s turning into quite a nice day outside, but I’m actually shaking, I’m so cold. I think about what I should do now. I leave the studio, walk down the garden path to the back door and find the key (yet again, imaginatively placed under a flowerpot). I go inside and put the kettle on, amazed at how calm I am. I feel nothing inside, just a big, empty hole – and I hope it stays like that because the idea of feeling anything is unbearable.

Just as the kettle boils I hear the click of the front door opening and a second later, the sound of it closing. I turn my head slowly towards the kitchen doorway. Presumably I’m going to have to explain to Dad why I’m not at school and my brain seems to have stopped working, which is a problem because I will need a good excuse in approximately two seconds.

I hear footsteps coming down the hallway and pause. I can’t actually see anything because there’s suddenly something wrong with my eyes – water is flowing out of them and I can’t make it stop. I blink hard and rub them and when I look up, it isn’t Dad standing there at all.

I run across the room and she meets me halfway, scooping me up in a big hug that I never want to end.

‘It’s OK, Livvy, it’s OK,’ she whispers. ‘I’m here now, you can let it all go.’

I realize that I’m crying and that now I’ve started I might actually not ever stop. But I have to stop because I have to say the words – even though I know that once I’ve said them they can never be unsaid. I pull back from her and look her squarely in the eye.

‘It’s not OK, Aunt Leah. It’s never going to be OK again. Don’t you understand?’

She doesn’t break my eye contact but reaches out her hand and holds on to my arm, as if she understands that all of a sudden, I feel like I’m a kite that might just disappear on a strong gust of air if somebody doesn’t tether me to them.

‘Do you know?’ I ask her, suddenly scared that she might not and that I might be called upon to be brave for her. She nods slightly but stays quiet, and I know she realizes that I need to speak the words myself.

‘I only knew for sure just now,’ I tell her. ‘How did I not know before?’

‘Maybe you weren’t ready to know before,’ she says, still looking at me.

‘I’m not ready to know now,’ I wail. ‘I don’t want to know. I shouldn’t have to know something like this.’

I can’t look at her any more and she pulls me back into her arms, holding me tightly against her.

‘Make it go away – make it be all right.’ I’m hoping that maybe Leah can think of the answer – something that’ll fix this.

‘I can’t, Livvy,’ Leah says.

‘So it’s really going to happen then?’ I ask, feeling the last, tiny burst of hope explode in my stomach.

‘Yes,’ she says, and the hope is extinguished, leaving only the empty hole.

‘My mum is really going to die,’ I whisper.

‘Yes, my darling girl, she is,’ Leah whispers back.

I stand in our kitchen for a long time and it gets so I’m not sure whether I’m holding on to Leah or she’s holding on to me. My legs start to hurt and my eyes are sore, and I know that I need to move but I’m scared to let go in case the whole world has shattered into tiny pieces while I was crying. Leah makes the decision for me, moving me towards the table and guiding me into a chair.

‘What your mum always recommends in times of need is a big slab of chocolate,’ she says, and heads towards the kitchen cupboards. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times she’s listened to me and sorted me out and put the world to rights over a decent chunk of rich, dark chocolate.’ I can hear a catch in her voice and I look up anxiously to see if she’s crying, but she looks across at me and gives a reassuring smile.

‘Why aren’t you crying?’ I ask her, sniffing loudly. I know that, despite Mum’s accounts in her diaries of Leah when they were children, they’re really close now, always nattering on the phone to each other and arranging weekends away.

‘I’ve done a whole heap of crying – and I’ll do a whole heap more, I know, but right now, I’m all cried out,’ she says, handing me a box of tissues. ‘Besides, I haven’t come here to cry, have I? I’ve come to look after my naughty, skiving niece!’

That gets me thinking, which seems to help stem the tears a little. This is a good thing because my crying seems to have taken on a life of its own and I really wouldn’t mind a few minutes off, just to think about something else. My head is throbbing and my eyes are stinging – even my nose feels sore and I’m not sure why that is.

‘Why are you here? I thought you were meant to be coming at the weekend? It’s only Monday.’

‘I’m quite aware of what day it is, young lady. As my boss will be when I phone him up later. And as for why I’m here – I told you, to make sure you’re OK.’ She passes me a cup of tea and sits down opposite.

‘But I’m supposed to be in school,’ I say, confused now.

‘Exactly! Fancy bunking off on a Monday – even I used to wait until Friday afternoon. And your mum never skived a single day. You’ll be in so much trouble when she walks through that door, I can tell you that for nothing!’ Leah actually looks like she’s enjoying herself for a minute, and despite everything, I can’t help grinning.

‘But how did you know I wasn’t in school?’ I ask her. ‘I thought you had a proper job – or are my parents employing you to spy on me?’

‘Hahaha – or should that be LOL? I had no idea that you weren’t where you were supposed to be – until I had a phone call from your father at ten past nine this morning, asking me to hotfoot it over here and keep an eye on you.’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes.’

‘Dad rang you?’

‘Yes, Liv.’

‘To say I was skiving?’

‘Crikey – you catch on quick, don’t you?’

‘He knew I was here? How?’

She smiles at me. ‘He saw you throwing yourself over the garden wall. Actually, he heard what he described as “a terrible racket” in the alley and went upstairs to see if he could catch sight of whoever was dragging his bin down the path. Imagine his surprise when your sweet little head popped up over the wall!’

I gawp at her, speechless.

‘He kept watching to make sure you survived the landing and saw you go into the studio. He said you’d had a difficult start to the day and figured that you could do with a day off.’

I still can’t say anything. I am silenced by the knowledge that my dad knew where I was the whole time – and left me alone to sort stuff out without telling me off for skiving.

‘One last thing, Liv?’ says Leah.

‘Yes?’ I mumble.

‘He asked me to tell you not to bother applying for any jobs at MI5 – he says stealth-like actions are not your forte!’ Leah tries to keep a straight face but fails. She starts laughing and I join in. The weird thing about laughing, though, is that it uses exactly the same parts of your body that you use when you cry, so we both stop quite quickly in case the crying takes over again.

‘I was coming over tonight or tomorrow anyway,’ she says, serious again now. ‘Your dad could do with the help and I need to get to grips with how you guys do things around here. Don’t want to go upsetting Isaac by giving him the wrong spoon!’

We smile at each other, but are back in the real world again now. The real world, where Leah coming to stay at the weekend could be too late. Where tomorrow might belong to a different life – a life that I wish, with every bit of me, was not going to be mine.