I’ve been outside since six o’clock this morning. I was so excited about Dad’s idea that I couldn’t sleep and I’m sure that it’s going to help Mum to start fighting back. At half past seven Isaac appears at the back door, looking out at me in confusion.

‘Liv – what are you doing?’

‘I’m digging up primroses and putting them into pots!’ I tell him, standing up straight and stretching out. This gardening stuff is actually quite hard work.

‘Why can’t you leave them where they are?’ Isaac asks.

‘Well, Mum really wants to sit in the garden only she can’t because she’s too poorly – so we’re going to take the garden in to her!’ I say. ‘We can put the pots in her bedroom and as soon as the garden centre opens, Dad’s going to buy a little tree – she’ll love it and it will remind her how fab it is to be outdoors, so she’ll want to get better. Then she can be in the garden for real!’

Isaac doesn’t say anything and I can tell he’s thinking about what I’ve said. I carry on potting the plants and after a few minutes I sense him stepping outside and coming to stand beside me on the lawn. I look down and see his bare feet on the grass, toes scrunching up at the cold, damp sensation, and I stare at him in amazement. Isaac cannot bear certain sensations and I have never, in my whole life, seen him go barefoot outdoors – not in the garden, not even on the beach.

‘Let me help?’ he asks me, and puts his hand out for a trowel. Wordlessly, I pass it to him and watch as he makes a small hole in the pot of dirt that I’ve found. Another first – I can’t wait to tell Mum, I think to myself.

We keep going until all the pots I’ve found are filled with the last of the primroses and daffodils. I line them all up on the patio and we step back, proud of our efforts. I’m sure this will help Mum see that she needs to make sure she’s still here next spring.

‘Mum’s really ill, isn’t she.’ It’s not a question and when I turn to Isaac he refuses to meet my eye, looking down at the paving stones and scuffing his toes against the rough edges.

‘Yeah, she is,’ I tell him.

‘What will we do when she’s dead?’ Isaac asks.

I suck in my breath and try not to show him how shocked I am to hear those words. It sounds so harsh, hearing him just say it like that. I think about what to tell him. I want to yell at him for not having positive thoughts and I’m scared that him saying it out loud might be bad karma or something – but I can’t say that. And deep down inside, I’m not entirely sure that thinking positively is going to be enough here. There’s no point in lying but I don’t know how to make this OK for him. Because it really isn’t OK.

I tell the truth. ‘I don’t know, Isaac.’

‘Will we forget about her?’

‘No!’ I cry. ‘We definitely won’t forget about her! How could we? She’s always going to be our mum.’

‘I’m scared, Liv,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m not good at remembering things. I forget stuff all the time.’

‘But this is different – it’s really important!’

‘But I forget important stuff too. I forgot to feed Harold – and he died.’

Harold the goldfish was Mum and Dad’s one attempt at giving Isaac responsibility for a pet. It was not a success.

‘Yes, but, Isaac – Harold didn’t die because you forgot to feed him. He died because you thought he might like a day out and put him in your pocket!’ Mum and Dad had taken us to an aquarium and didn’t know that Isaac had brought Harold along until he took him out of his coat pocket and held him up to ‘show him his fishy friends’.

I take hold of Isaac’s hand. ‘I promise you that I won’t let you forget about Mum,’ I tell him. ‘Now come on – you’re going to be late for your taxi if we don’t get a move on.’

‘What time is it, Liv?’ asks Isaac.

I glance at my watch. ‘Just gone eight o’clock and you haven’t had breakfast yet, so hurry up!’

I start towards the back door but Isaac isn’t moving. I look back at him and grab his hand, giving it a yank. ‘Come on, Isaac!’

‘No, Liv. What time is it?’

I huff, feeling exasperated. Now is not a good moment for Isaac to get weird on me. ‘I already told you. But if you want the exact time, then it’s now four minutes past eight. Satisfied?’

‘No! Liv – just do the time thing!’ Isaac is starting to get frustrated and I am about to leave him in the garden and find Dad so that he can deal with this, when I see what Isaac is holding in his other hand. A dandelion with a head full of seeds.

And suddenly I understand. I remember a few summers ago when Mum showed me and Isaac how to blow dandelions so we could tell the time. I got bored well before he did – and he really drove me crazy making me blow those dandelion heads, one after the other. Every now and then we’d actually get the real time on the dandelion clock and Isaac would burst out laughing – a sound that we don’t hear very often.

Gently, I take the dandelion from Isaac. ‘Get ready to count,’ I warn him, ‘because this is a once-only event.’ And then I start blowing.

‘One o’clock!’ chants Isaac. The dandelion seeds flutter a few feet and then fall to the ground.

‘Two o’clock! Three o’clock!’

Just as he says ‘Four o’clock’, a breeze gusts across the patio and takes the rest of the seeds. We watch them float through the air and across the garden.

‘Right. It’s four o’clock,’ I say, throwing the bald dandelion stem on to the grass. ‘Now will you get ready for school?’

Isaac lets me lead him through the back door and into the kitchen, and I’m sure he’s remembering happier days when life seemed simple and the passing of time could be told by dandelion clocks, and nothing else mattered.

Later, when Isaac has gone to school, Dad takes me to the garden centre and we choose a gorgeous little tree in a pot. We bring it home and tie ribbons around the branches and then, when Leah comes down to tell us that Mum’s fast asleep, we all leap into action. We carry up the pots and put them on her dressing table and bedside table, and some on top of the wardrobe. Dad puts the tree in the corner of the room where she can see it, even when she’s lying down. I bring up one extra flowerpot that I planted all on my own, after Isaac had left for school. It’s not as big as the others, but I think it’s beautiful and that it might make Mum laugh. And then we creep out of the room and wait for her to wake up.

We’re sitting round the kitchen table when we hear a cry from upstairs. I stand up and run, Dad just in front of me and Leah behind. My heart is racing – what if something’s wrong with Mum? We burst into the room and look at the bed. Mum is sitting up, smiling and laughing and pointing at the room we’ve made for her.

‘You did all this? For me?’ she cries.

I race round to the side of her bed and hug her.

‘I love it! It really feels like summer is on its way, at long last. Thank you, thank you – it’s fantastic!’

‘Does it feel a bit like being outside?’ I ask her.

‘It’s even better,’ she says. ‘I can be all cosy in bed and be part of the garden too.’ She looks over at Dad. ‘I love the tree,’ she tells him. ‘It’s just like –’

‘The ones we had when we got married!’ Dad finishes for her. ‘I know you think I didn’t pay any attention to our wedding plans, but I do remember the trees – and the incredibly gorgeous bride!’

‘It must have taken all of you ages,’ Mum says. I tell her that Isaac helped, and describe him walking on the grass with bare feet and getting muddy hands. Mum looks teary-eyed. ‘That makes it even more special,’ she says.

We all sit on the bed and chat for a while, not talking about anything important, just everyday things. It’s nice in Mum’s room with the sun streaming through the window – I fetch my camera and take lots of pictures of her, some of her leaning back against Dad and a few of her pretending to eat the Mars bar I bought her yesterday. She says she doesn’t really have much of an appetite, but it’s funny watching her messing about, pulling silly faces. My favourite photo, though, is one of her on her own, surrounded by all our flowers and smiling at me in a way that makes me feel good inside. After a while, Dad says that Mum needs her rest, so we all stand to leave her for a snooze. Just as I’m about to go, she calls me back and whispers in my ear.

‘Those flowers over there,’ she says, pointing to the special, funny little pot I’d placed on the table by the window. ‘They’re my favourite. I can’t ever walk past one of those without wanting to pick it and blow all the seeds off! And when they’ve got their flowers they remind me that beautiful things can happen, even when you least expect it. They look so gorgeous, all mixed up together – I’ve never seen a plant pot like it!’ She pulls me to her and kisses me on my forehead. ‘I love you so much, Olivia. Thank you for letting me get to know you. You and Isaac have made me the luckiest woman in the whole wide world.’ She lies back on the pillows. ‘Will you do me a favour, sweetheart? Put that pot over here, right next to the bed where I can always see it.’

I move the pot carefully on to her bedside table and then bend down and give her a hug. She closes her eyes and I start to sing a bit of the lullaby that she used to sing to me. I’m a rubbish singer, though, and I can’t remember the words properly so I hum most of it, just singing the last two lines.

‘Lay thee down now and rest,

May thy slumber be blessed.’

Maybe I’m not as awful a singer as I thought cos by the time I’m finished Mum is fast asleep.

‘Sweet dreams, Mum,’ I tell her. ‘I love you too.’ And then I leave her in peace.

I’m sitting in my room now, by the window. The house feels strangely empty. Isaac came home a few hours ago and we all had tea, although nobody was very hungry. Leah tried to get us to play a game of cards, but we were all distracted and Isaac ended up getting cross because we weren’t keeping to the proper rules, so we gave up and I decided to go and read a book.

I can’t settle on anything, though. I know I have loads of homework to do but that seems so unimportant right now. I could print the photos that I took today, but I’d have to go outside to the studio and that feels like too much effort.

That’s why I’m sitting here, just listening to the sounds of the house. I can hear the faint sound of the television coming from downstairs and I know that Leah and Isaac are watching some silly quiz show. I could go and watch it with them but it doesn’t really seem fair if we’re all together down there while Mum’s on her own up here.

Mum’s diaries are on my bedside table – I’ve got through loads of entries. She’s been revising for some exams, although, from the sound of it, she’s spent longer colour-coding her revision timetable than actually doing any work. I read something last night that I just can’t stop thinking about so I grab her diary and turn to 23 June 1989.

I’m going to try to write more often in this diary to record this crucial time in my life. Maybe I’ll use it for future reference. Who knows, one day I might have a husband and kids (!) and I might let them read it! How mega-embarrassing! I hope I’ll be a brilliant mum, though – I’ll always try to understand how my kids are feeling and I’ll be on exactly the same wavelength as them. I don’t understand it when adults forget what it’s really like to be a kid – surely it can’t be THAT hard to remember? I’m gonna let my kids do whatever they want – I’ll trust them to make their own decisions. I’m gonna be more like their best friend than their mum – then we’ll all be happy!!

Actually, I’ll probably burn these diaries before I get too old. Imagine if they fell into the wrong hands! I’ll just have to tell my kids how amazing and brilliant I was when I was a teenager.

I am so glad that Mum didn’t burn her diaries and I’m really happy that she hasn’t actually tried to be my best friend. I don’t need any more friends – I just need my mum.

I hear Dad clattering around in the kitchen, loading the dishwasher, and then his footsteps coming upstairs and going into his and Mum’s room. It’s funny how reassuring these noises are and how I can picture what’s going on in each room of the house just by listening.

Now there’s the sound of the noisy kettle going on in the kitchen – there must be an ad break. Leah will be making two cups of that disgusting chamomile tea that she makes every night and brings up to Mum. She swears that it’s healthy, but I can’t see how anything that smells so bad can do you any good. I can hear Isaac channel-hopping on the television – he has a few adverts that he really loves and every time there’s an ad break he switches channels as quickly as possible, hoping to find his favourite ones. If there were a channel that only had adverts, then Isaac would be really happy.

Mum’s bedroom door opens and then closes gently and I listen for Dad’s footsteps, expecting them to head back downstairs. Instead, everything is quiet. I picture Dad standing on the landing outside their room, and I’m just about to get up to look when I hear him moving and then he opens my door.

Suddenly I can’t hear the hysterical laughter from the studio audience on the television. The kettle must have boiled because I can’t hear that either. All I can hear is the sound of Dad, telling me that Mum has gone. That lying in her bed, listening to the sounds of her home, she has left us and she won’t be coming back.

I get up slowly and go out into the hall. I stand outside her bedroom door, very still. I don’t need to go inside to see her – instead I just listen. And as I listen, I’m certain that I can hear the evening breeze, coming through the open window and whispering through the room, gently blowing the seeds from the flowers in Mum’s pot across her bed, marking the time that she closed her eyes for the last time ever. I imagine her, drifting quietly away, looking at the flowers I planted so carefully this morning and that she told me made her happy. And I am glad that my dandelion clocks were the last thing that she looked at before she went.