I wake up a little later to feel someone running their fingers through my tousled hair, which is very strange. I can smell the strong soap that Jessica uses at work on her hands, and when I open my eyes, she’s staring out my window. She’s never done anything like this before.

Perhaps she thinks I’m still asleep. I hear her say, “I’m sorry, Georgie. I’m so sorry,” over and over again.

Georgie. Jessica never calls me Georgie.

I open my eyes and murmur, “Why? Why are you sorry?”

She stiffens a little in surprise and pulls her hand away from my head. There’s a long silence. And I mean a loooong silence. I lie on my side and stare at the moon through my window. I hadn’t even closed the curtains, and it splashes my bedroom with shadows. A gray-blue light falls on the dogs on my duvet cover, and the puppy calendar that I get in my stocking every Christmas. “Jessica?” I say eventually. I hear her take a deep breath.

I don’t turn round to look at her; I don’t want to make eye contact. She says the quietest, “Sorry.” I’m not even sure what she’s sorry for, but I say nothing.

We stay like that for a moment; then she says, “It’s going to be tough. The next few weeks, months, years even. It’s going to be tougher than any of us have ever known, and I’m sorry I’ve not been able to do the one thing that I’m supposed to do.”

“What do you mean?” I turn my head to look at her. The pale light creates deep lines on her face and forehead. She honestly looks about twenty years older.

“Find the cure. I know it’s not just me but—”

“It’s not your fault, Jessica. None of this is your fault. It’s…”

I stop myself from saying, “It’s mine.”

Jessica sighs. “It’s not yours, either.”

She’s wrong there. Dead wrong. But I can’t tell her. Instead, I’ll just have to put it right.

At that moment, that instant, an idea begins to form in my head.

I can hear the familiar music of the ten o’clock news from the TV downstairs, but I don’t feel like listening to any more stories about dogs being shot, and people dying, and reporters being gloomy.

I roll back over and close my eyes, as if I’m going to sleep. A moment later, Jessica gets up from my bed and leaves the room. My eyes are wide open, and my brain is fizzing with the thought of what I have to do.

But I might never have done it if my phone had not pinged beneath my pillow at that moment, with an incoming message.