I’m lying in bed, trying not to think. I’m not sure how long I’ve been awake but it gets light so early at the moment and once I’ve woken up it’s really hard to go back to sleep. I never close my curtains any more and I always keep my window open, even though Isaac keeps moaning at me – he reckons it’s cold. I don’t bother to tell him that the cold feeling in our house has got nothing to do with my window being open. Dad mutters under his breath that I’d better start closing the window when autumn arrives or the cost of heating will bankrupt him. I don’t listen, though – having my window open makes me feel closer to Mum.

‘Liv! Isaac!’

I can hear Dad calling and I bury my head deeper under my duvet. My door rattles a bit as Isaac thunders past and races down the stairs to where Dad is waiting. He has a meeting with Isaac’s teacher this morning and told us last night that he’d take us both to school in the car today.

I, however, have absolutely no intention of going to school. I’ve come a long way since my first rubbish attempt at skiving all those months ago. I am now Queen Of Bunking Off. My success is mostly based on keeping under the radar – I still go to school a couple of times a week but I rotate the days I miss so that no individual teacher senses a pattern in my absences. My school has a two-week rolling timetable so I reckon I can get away with it for quite a while yet.

‘LIV!’ Dad is opening the front door and I can picture him looking anxiously at the clock in the hall.

‘Have you seen Liv this morning?’ I hear him ask Isaac.

‘No.’ Isaac sounds keen to go. ‘Come on, Dad, or we’ll be late.’

‘She must have gone in early. I hope she took some lunch money.’ Dad sounds a bit worried and I feel a pang of guilt. For a second I’m tempted to call his name. I know that he’d be up here in an instant. He’d ask me why I’m still in bed and I could tell him everything – that some mornings it seems like my whole body is made of concrete and the prospect of getting up, dressing and leaving the house seems impossible. Maybe he’d cancel his meeting and we could all stay at home in our pyjamas, cuddled up in front of the TV, eating toast and peanut butter.

Then I hear the front door slam and I’m all alone in the empty house. I’m too late and the chance to ask Dad for a hug has gone.

I’m not really sure why I haven’t gone into school today. I do know that it feels like a lonely place to be. When I went back after it happened everyone went out of their way to be nice to me. I didn’t really like that cos it felt wrong – I just wanted to get on with normal stuff. But it was worse whenever anyone mentioned the word ‘mum’. Everyone would freeze and then the person who’d said it would say, ‘Oh sorry, Liv, really sorry – didn’t mean to upset you or anything.’ Like, come on. I’m not stupid – I know that there are mums out there, going to work, making the tea, forgetting that you need your PE kit washed by tomorrow. Just not my mum.

To be honest, it’s not really any better staying at home. It’s weird. All of our stuff is here, the stuff we’ve had forever – but it just doesn’t feel like home any more. It’s a bit like when you’ve been away on holiday and everything feels a bit different when you get home. Except that things usually go back to normal pretty quickly and I don’t think our house will ever feel the same again.

I must have dozed off for a bit cos I’ve just looked at the clock and it’s 11.30 a.m. My tummy is rumbling but I can’t be bothered to think about food. It seems utterly pointless to put any effort into making a meal when it’s only me that’ll be eating it. I get out of bed and drag myself across the room to the door. I brace myself and open it slowly – I hate being in the house when there’s nobody else here.

The house is silent. Too silent. I can hear the hall clock ticking and the sound of blood rushing in my ears – when I swallow it sounds stupidly loud. I’m wondering why I didn’t just go to school where I could get lost in all the noise. If I was still friends with Alice I suppose I could have hung around with her, but since it happened I’ve gone out of my way to avoid her. I feel bad, like I’ve abandoned her, but when it first happened I didn’t have the energy to deal with anyone else’s sadness. Alice phoned me up after the funeral but she just cried down the telephone and I didn’t know what to say. It felt like I should be making her feel better, but she’s still got her mum – she’s got nothing to cry about.

After a few weeks I kind of understood why she was sad. I wished that I could tell her how it felt and let her try to make me feel better. But then I realized nothing could ever make me feel better and it seemed wrong even to think of being anything but sad – like being disloyal to Mum. Now I can’t be near Alice in case she reminds me and makes me feel even worse. She knows everything about me and if there’s anyone who could open the box in my head that I’ve padlocked shut, it’s her – so I’ve just kept out of her way. It seems safer like that. I’m still here so it’s obviously possible to live when your whole, entire life has been destroyed. I just have to do this my way, and that means not letting other people bring their memories and thoughts and sadness into my world.

I close the door again, walk across to my dressing table and sit down. The face staring back at me from the mirror is pale and ugly – I’ve got spots all across my nose. After Mum’s make-up lesson I was really taking care of my skin but that was ages ago now. I ran out of cleanser early on – I know Dad would buy me some more if I ask him but I can’t be bothered. I pick up my hairbrush and try to tame my mad hair. But there’re so many tangles that I do what I always do and grab a scrunchie. At least when it’s tied up nobody can see what a mess it is. Then I lean forward and really look at myself, right in the eyes. I’m not sure what I’m hoping to see but whatever it is, I don’t find it cos there’s nothing there. It’s like looking at a painting on a wall – not that anyone would want to do a painting of me. The person staring back at me doesn’t even begin to remind me of me.

I slump back down across my bed and stare at the ceiling. I seem to spend most of my time lying here – I’m just too tired to do much of anything else. Sometimes I sleep, which is good because it helps to kill a few more pointless hours. The only problem with sleeping is the waking. Every time I sleep, I dream – vivid, lifelike dreams that wake me up feeling, for just a second, that everything is OK. I wake up unsure about where the dream ends and reality starts, and that moment is full of joy. Then I remember.

So mostly I try not to sleep. Mostly I lie on this bed and wonder why. I wonder if this was always going to happen – if my destiny was decided long before I knew anything about it. It makes me feel as if all the happy times were just a joke – the warm-up act before the main event. Maybe it would’ve been better if Mum had never been here in the first place? Perhaps this is so hard because I know what life was like before, and everywhere I look there’s about a million reminders of what we used to have – of the family that we used to be. I wonder, for the thousandth time, why this had to happen to me. And the nasty, nagging voice in my head whispers that maybe, Mum just didn’t love me enough to stay.

I would rather feel nothing for the rest of my life than feel like I wasn’t good enough to keep her.