In the foyer I had to wait for someone heavier than me to activate the automatic doors. Then as soon as I shimmied out of the hospital, the north-east wind blasted me in the face.

“Wow! That’s strong,” I gasped, lunging towards a porch pillar and clinging to it for dear life. “This could be a bit of a problem,” I murmured. “I could be blown all over the place, maybe across the Channel.”

We were an awfully long way from the sea, but it was possible, wasn’t it? I could have been like one of those balloons they release for charity that are found hundreds of miles from home. When Darren had offered me this opportunity to slip out of my body and be invisible, I’d never thought it would be so difficult.

“Challenging, dear,” Mrs Baxter’s voice drilled into my head. “It’s not difficult, it’s just challenging. You need to change your perspective. Think about it in a different way.”

“Not you again,” I muttered. “Give me a break, will you?”

I clung to my pillar and looked around me. From the way people were dressed, the wind was obviously bitingly cold. Everyone was wrapped up as if on an Arctic expedition, but I was wearing a hospital gown which was open down the back and all I felt was a slight tingling, like one of those peppermint face masks that make you feel as if you don’t fit properly into your own skin.

At least I didn’t feel half dead any more. A couple of unchopped tendrils of hair blew across my eyes and I wanted to laugh out loud just because I was here, in the real world, but I daren’t. Even though people couldn’t see me, they might be able to hear me; that was something I still had to put to the test, but now wasn’t the time. Now it was more important that I worked out how to use this wind to my advantage.

A covered walkway led to the main road and people had their heads down, bracing themselves as their coats billowed out behind them. There was no way I was going to be strong enough to fight my way through that wind tunnel.

“Think, Jess, think,” I instructed.

And there it was, my solution. It wasn’t ideal. It would take more time, which was something I was painfully short of, but it was the only option. I would have to go the long way around, and there was no time to waste.

“Here we go,” I said, releasing the pillar. A mischievous current of air caught me up and whisked me straight round to the back of the hospital. At first I was tumbling and spinning all over the place, trying to hold the gown down and preserve my modesty. Once I relaxed a little, unclamped my arms from my sides and spread them out to my sides to help me to balance better, it was brilliant. I felt as if I was flying like a rather ungainly bird that had been trapped in a cage for too long. I stretched out my fingers, pointed my toes and turned my face up to the pale blue sky. I was outside, away from the thick airlessness of the hospital room and, at that moment, it was the best feeling in the whole world. Even the traffic’s humming and buzzing sounded like my own personal welcome-back-to-the-world song.

It was as if I’d been away for a long holiday and was seeing everything from a new perspective. The trees were coming into leaf and everything looked brighter and more beautiful than I remembered. A horrible thought suddenly grabbed me. I got homesick just being away from home for a couple of days; heaven only knew how I would manage an eternity. I wondered what would happen if I didn’t return to that carcass still lying in the hospital bed. Would Darren really bother to come and find me when he was under so much pressure?

There was a sudden lull in the wind and I dropped down to earth, just on the other side of the safety barrier to the car park. As I looked towards the road I could see Mum’s car waiting at the traffic lights. I wanted those lights to stick on red so that I could run over and dive into the front seat. When I’d been lying in bed, waiting to make my escape, I knew where it was that I wanted to go straight away – to see Sara. She was my best and oldest friend so she had to come first. But standing there, watching Mum’s Ford Fiesta turn the corner and head towards home, I changed my mind. It wasn’t part of the deal, but I had to go back and see my bedroom. I had to check on Samantha, look at all my precious possessions and maybe get out of the hospital gown. Until I’d done that, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else, and Darren would never know, would he?

Buses stopped right outside the hospital, but not the one I wanted. My bus, the number 29, went from the front of the train station and the best way to get there was straight up the new road past the rugby ground. Normally that would be a fifteen-minute walk at most. As I lurked by the traffic lights, the wind tried desperately to whip my gown up around my face and wrench my feet from under me. The small, newly planted saplings in the middle of the carriageway looked as if they were also struggling to stay tethered to the ground. My flying skills were still pretty nonexistent and it’s difficult to keep your decency when you’ve got to flap your arms out to the side to keep your balance. Besides, I just didn’t want to risk being blown away for miles in the wrong direction or propelled underneath the wheels of a lorry, so I opted to try to walk.

Taking the longer route, I was protected by the towering red-brick prison walls and kinder, narrower streets. Nearly an hour later I stumbled over the pedestrian crossing and could have hugged the driver when I found my bus already waiting.

It felt really sneaky slipping on board without paying, but it wasn’t as if space was limited. Upstairs was completely empty and I collapsed into the seats right at the front. Sara, Nat, Kelly, Yas and I always raced to sit there. We liked to dodge the overhanging branches as they smacked into the window. Last time we’d done that Nat had got a bit carried away and screamed as she threw herself into the aisle, knocking into some elderly lady’s shopping bag. Half a dozen oranges rolled to the back of the bus like bowling balls. We’d got some really dirty looks, but we all had tears of laughter streaming down our cheeks as we crawled around trying to retrieve the fruit.

Thinking about that made me want to cry, sad tears this time. In my normal human form I cried easily, at the slightest excuse, but now my eyes were bone dry. I propped my feet against the front of the bus and looked out of the window. We lumbered up Forest Road past the park where my brother plays football on a Saturday morning and on past the church where my parents got married and Jamie and I were christened.

“That’s where my funeral will be, I suppose,” I murmured, and a shudder ran through me.

The bus slowly circled the prettiest roundabout in town; it brimmed with miniature daffodils and bright purple aubretia. Then we were almost there, at the place where it had happened. A lump formed in my throat. What if there were flowers to mark the spot? That would be a sign, wouldn’t it – a sign that I was really dead and that all of this was just some horrible trick.

I didn’t want to look but I couldn’t help myself. My head may have been fixed straight ahead but my eyeballs slid to the side and stared at the spot. A sigh of relief rippled through me. There wasn’t a clue as to what had occurred, no inkling that Death lurked on that cosy-looking corner with its neat hedges and bewitching bursts of spring.

I buried my head in my hands, the relief dissolving faster than an ice cube held under the hot tap. If only I hadn’t been in such a hurry, if only Dad wasn’t having an affair, if only I wasn’t so stupid and the maths hadn’t taken so long, if only I had left earlier, if only I hadn’t broken my promise to Yasmin about walking, if only it hadn’t been raining I might have been able to stop in time, if only I’d had lights. So many ‘if onlys’.

I had worked myself up into such a state that I nearly missed my stop but I hit the bell at the last minute, forcing the driver to brake sharply. I gripped the top of the rail with both hands, swivelled down the stairs without making a sound and dashed out of the open doors. As I stood on the pavement looking back, the driver was shaking his head, totally bemused. The sight of him made me smile.

My house has lovely large sash windows and a friendly red front door. The porch floor is covered with black and white Edwardian tiles which look really smart next to the crimson paint. It’s a tall house but it doesn’t bear down on you. Instead, it looks like the sort of house that wants to wrap its walls around you and give you a big hug. Someone had planted up the wicker hanging basket with giant yellow pansies, and snuggled around the drainpipe that reaches up past the landing window little pink clematis flowers were blooming.

I’d never noticed before how pretty everything was. It felt as if I’d been away for months, not just a few weeks, and I couldn’t wait to get inside. I tried the shiny brass door handle and vaguely wondered when Mum was finding time to get out the duster and polish. The door was locked, of course, as was the side gate, and I had no idea what had happened to my keys after the accident. My foot-stamping was worthy of a two-year-old and my whole body rippled like a stone-splashed pool. Wishy-washy shades of blue shimmered from my gown and momentarily I looked like the background sky to one of those delicate watercolours Gran paints at her art class. Seconds later I had faded back to a ghostly mistiness.

“Now use that brain, Jessica.”

I pretended to peer over my spectacles like Mrs Baxter.

“What do ghosts do, dear?”

“They walk through walls,” I replied. “At least that’s what they do in films, and this whole situation is fantastic enough to be a film.”

There was a lavender bush next to the porch and I pinched a couple of leaves between my fingers, lifting them up to my nose. My nostrils detected the faintest smell but I was sure that it should have been stronger, that it was me at fault and not the lavender. People say that ghosts sometimes have a distinctive aroma. I decided there and then that if I was going to come back and do any haunting I would like to smell like lavender. It’s one of my favourite scents.

As I wasn’t officially a ghost yet but just on the waiting list, I decided a bit of training wouldn’t go amiss. First of all I leaned gently against the front door and tried to melt into it. Nothing happened. There was obviously a knack to this and I wasn’t getting it right.

“Perhaps a big run-up is needed,” I muttered.

I modelled myself on Will, who’s a fast bowler and looks really irresistible in his cricket whites. Big mistake. Vaporising through woodwork was obviously something else to add to my list of things to improve upon. In my human form I’d probably have dislocated my shoulder as I slammed my whole self into the solid panelling before slumping down on to the doormat, but all I felt was a slight ache. I didn’t think I’d made much of a noise – the slightest rattle of the letter box, maybe – but inside the house I heard meticulous footsteps crossing the parquet floor. I just managed to crawl across the gravel out of her way before Gran stepped onto the path and scanned the street.

“What are you doing here, Gran?” I murmured. “I thought you’d be at your house.”

She was wearing some dangly silver earrings I had bought her for Christmas and a severe expression on her face. I longed to reach up and stroke those nipped-in cheeks and to bury my face in her pink cashmere cardigan but I couldn’t risk it. She might have a heart attack, and being responsible for my own demise was more than enough to cope with, let alone having Gran’s death on my conscience. I stood up and tiptoed towards the door. Thankfully I was so unusually light-footed that the gravel didn’t crunch at all. I didn’t even make any indentations. Gran sighed, shook her head and bent to pick up the milk carrier. As I slipped past, I brushed the back of her skirt and she stood to attention faster than one of the guards outside Buckingham Palace.

“Who’s there?” she asked, spinning around.

If only I could have told her not to worry, that it was only me. It was unbearable. I just fluttered upstairs to my bedroom and floated down onto my flowery duvet. I felt absolutely exhausted, but it was so good to be back, surrounded by all my precious things.

The room looked almost the same as when I had left it: a little tidier, maybe, without the usual half-finished mugs of tea on my bedside table and the clothes piled on the back of my chair. The guinea pig cage was in its usual place, though, on top of my chest of drawers. There wasn’t a sound from inside the little blue igloo where Samantha sleeps, and the pulsating from my heart space seemed to stop. I was almost dead already though so that probably didn’t matter. I crept over the carpet and peered inside. Blackcurrant eyes gleamed in the shadow but she was so still. Perhaps she’d died and nobody had realised. Then she squeaked. It was absolutely one of the best sounds in the whole world.

“Oh Sammy,” I gasped. “You know that I’m here, don’t you?”

“Squeak, squeak, squeak,” she replied.

“Shh!” I put my finger to my lips. “You’ll have Gran up here wondering what’s going on.”

I fumbled with the door to the cage and scratched between her ears with my clumsy fingers. She threw back her head and squeaked again.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll try to pick you up, but don’t blame me if I drop you.”

It was easier than I thought. She was completely still as I lifted her between my hands and I could feel the slightest warmth in my palms from her little tummy.

“I can sort of feel you, Sammy,” I said, plucking her from the cage and cuddling her to me, “but everything’s a bit numb, as if I’ve had a bad case of pins and needles. But I am so happy to see you.”

I sat on the bed and placed her gently on my lap. To anyone else she’d have looked as if she was sitting on the duvet but I knew she wasn’t. I could just feel her claws against my legs and her nose nudging my fingers. I lay back against the pillow as she scrabbled over me, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I wasn’t ‘all there’. She felt as light and feathery as I did myself as she tickled my chin and nibbled at my gown.

“Have they been feeding you enough?” I asked, putting my hands around her tummy. “Hmm, guess you haven’t been off your food and pining for me then?”

I lifted Sam down onto the floor so that she could have a run around and opened my wardrobe. If at all possible, the gown had to go, but I wasn’t sure what would happen if I changed my clothes. I prayed they’d become invisible like the granny slippers. I felt like a personal shopper as I scrutinised every garment, trying to decide what would make me look and feel better.

Several things were obviously going to be too big, especially the grey striped shorts, and I’d gone off the black dress with the rose print. I wanted to wear something bright and cheerful, so in the end I chose an emerald green sweatshirt and some red jeans which had actually been a bit on the tight side when I bought them. Gran always says ‘red and green should never be seen’ but I think that’s one of those old-fashioned sayings that don’t apply any more. Besides, the trousers were perhaps more coral than red and the cut of them made my legs look longer. I’d had the sweatshirt for ages but it was still one of my favourites, and the green enhanced my eyes. I rummaged inside my chest of drawers for some underwear and took off the gown. It became visible the second it left my body.

“Uh-oh! I’m going to have to find somewhere to hide that,” I muttered and stuffed it at the back of the wardrobe underneath a collection of handbags.

Thankfully, as soon as I put on my own clothes they disappeared into thin air. In my eyes I did look a little brighter, but as I stood back and examined myself in the mirror I was convinced that no one else would be able to see me. Over the next few days, as I got closer to death, I wondered if my faint iridescence would fade away like a dissolving rainbow. That’s probably what would have happened in a film. Maybe, eventually, I would no longer be able to see myself at all. I pressed my hands against my cheeks. How scary would that be, when even I hadn’t the slightest visible sign that I still existed?

“Stop it, Jess,” I instructed. “There’s no point thinking about that now.”

I did a little twirl right in front of the guinea pig.

“Considering I’m at death’s door, Sammie, I don’t look too bad at all, do I?”

She stopped her exploration for a moment and stuck her nose in the air as if in agreement. It made me feel a whole lot better.

Carefully, I brushed the remains of my hair and pulled on some socks before studying footwear options. The shocking pink Doc Martens, which had been a Christmas present from Mum and Dad, didn’t really go with the rest of what I was wearing but they’d barely had a chance to come out of the box. They were begging for an outing and it cut me to the core that I had to resist. The other clothes probably wouldn’t be missed if Mum went rooting around, but if those boots disappeared from my wardrobe serious questions might be asked. I chose some old pink trainers which Dad had been on at me to throw away but I couldn’t bear to get rid of just because they were faded and frayed.

I sat on the floor to fumble with laces and glanced under my bed. It was where I kept my diary. My stomach jolted. It wasn’t there. I prowled the room in a state of panic, opening my bedside cupboard, my dressing table drawers, floating up a little less easily now to look on top of the wardrobe. I found the diary in my bookshelves, slotted between my horoscope book and a small hardback about the meaning of dreams. I grabbed it and sank to the floor, turning it over in my hands, searching for signs that Mum, Dad or Jamie had been trawling through my private thoughts, but there weren’t any dog-eared pages or greasy thumb prints. It looked exactly as I had left it. Sam scuttled over and started to chew the bottom of the bookshelf. I gathered her in my arms and held her little face up to mine.

“It doesn’t matter if they have found out all my secrets, does it, Sam? I won’t be here to get the lecture from Mum about school or the ribbing from Jamie about Will anyway.”

Despair felt as if it was making a gaping hole behind my breastbone.

“I don’t want to die, Sammie. I want to live, even if it does mean being teased and told off and everyone seeing into my soul.”

I placed Sam back on the floor and lay down beside her, curling up in a ball on the raspberry-coloured carpet. Lying there, like that, I felt safe from harm.

“I haven’t written a will, Sam,” I said. “People of my age don’t do that sort of thing, do they? But perhaps they ought to. I should have thought about what would happen to you if I wasn’t here. I suppose Mum and Dad will look after you. Jamie might even move you into his room. I’d like that, and I’d like him to use my savings to feed you on organic vegetables and buy you one of those super-duper guinea pig palaces. I definitely want Sara to have my gold locket. She could put two photos inside it, one of her and one of me, and then we’d be together forever. Yasmin ought to have my books. She’d give them a good home, and Nat’s always liked the silk sarong with the dolphin print that Gran and Gramps brought back from Australia.”

I was wondering whether to give Kelly my favourite teddy bear or the Beatrix Potter ornament collection, when the bedroom door opened. Gran stood on the threshold in her stockinged feet, which must be why I didn’t hear her coming up the stairs. I lay completely still as she scanned the room with those eyes that normally don’t miss a thing. The diary lay open in the middle of the carpet and Sam was in the process of weeing on my best cartoon drawing of Mrs Baxter. Gran stared at the guinea pig for a moment before pulling the door to. I sat up and heard a click as she picked up the phone in my parents’ bedroom. There was a pause as she waited for the person at the other end to answer.

“I need to speak to Mr Rowley, please. He should be there, visiting Jessica.”

My bedroom door didn’t catch properly unless you gave it a good tug so it was very slightly ajar. I padded over so that I could hear a bit better.

“Andrew!” Her voice was all ratchety. “Is everything all right?”

I imagined Dad’s curt reply. He and Gran never really got on, even before the other woman came on the scene.

“It’s just that I went into Jess’s room and the guinea pig is loose and…” Her voice sounded all shaky. “Something didn’t seem quite right. I can’t explain it, just a feeling. You’re sure there hasn’t been any change?”

I leaned against the wall and looked to where Sam had scuttled under the dressing table.

“What do I do now?” I mouthed at her. “Do I put you back and pretend it never happened, in which case Gran will probably think she’s going senile, or do I leave you to cause havoc?”

A car door slammed outside my window and I took a flying leap over the bed to see Mum’s car parked outside the gate. She was unloading a couple of bags of vegetables from the back seat and I could hear Gran scooting down the stairs, sounding as if she was barely picking her feet up on the way. I tut-tutted with my tongue. She was always telling me to walk properly or I’d wear out the carpet, but then I suppose these days threadbare stairs were the least of everyone’s worries.

Mum was accosted the minute she walked into the hall and within seconds there were two sets of footsteps racing up the stairs. Sam had never liked anyone picking her up other than me, and I stood on the bed half grimacing, half smiling, as Gran and Mum tried to catch one very disgruntled guinea pig.

“I can’t understand it,” Mum said, lunging towards a corner. “Jamie gives her a cuddle and a brush every morning before school, but he’s always very careful to put her back.”

I stifled a laugh as Sam darted straight through Gran’s hands while my mouth dropped open at the thought of my brother taking the trouble to groom my guinea pig. It was nice, though, to think of him holding her and giving her some love. I sent him a silent message over the airwaves.

“Thanks, Jamie. Wish you were here, but I guess you’ve gone to see me straight from school.”

Jamie’s visits to the hospital had been my link to normality. He told me the things I wanted to hear, the important things like which celebrities had split up, gossip from school and the occasional get-well message from Will.

“Hiya, Jess,” Jamie would call, even before he reached my bed.

I’d listen for the thud as he dropped his school bag in some inconvenient place and then I’d brace myself for THE KISS. Yuk! Who wants to be kissed by their brother? He’d never kissed me before, so why now? I knew it wasn’t a good sign. There was a plus side, though. He’d always picked up something to eat on the bus so sometimes I got a blast of bacon or cheeseburger and chips or, my own personal favourite, chicken tikka ciabatta. They were real-life smells and made me feel sad and jealous and hopeful all at the same time. My brother’s stomach is a bottomless pit, even in a time of crisis, and as soon as he’d made himself comfortable in the chair next to my bed I would hear the rustle of chocolate wrappers and the crunch of crisps, and savour a delicious waft of coffee. I became convinced he was doing it on purpose, to torment me.

Often, he didn’t stay long at the hospital and after a while his voice would sound husky, as if he’d been smoking, but I knew he hadn’t. When you can’t see you learn to listen, to feel, to smell. Just because your eyes won’t open it doesn’t mean you don’t know what’s going on. When my brother brushed his hand against mine as I lay in that hospital bed, I felt the roughness of his cuticles, I heard the little chewing noises he made as he bit them to the quick, I sensed the tension in his shoulders and heard the faintest sound as he ran desperate fingers through his hair. I didn’t like it when he got upset. He was the one I relied upon to give me a boost, and I realised that I wanted him here now, in my bedroom, to dilute the sadness which seemed to cling to Mum and Gran.

“There’s the diary as well,” Gran said, a little breathlessly. She was on her hands and knees now, reaching underneath my dressing table for the third time.

“Got you!” she exclaimed triumphantly, holding Sam a safe distance away from her appetising jumper, before placing her back in the cage.

Mum picked up the diary and dabbed the wee-adorned page with a tissue.

“I think I’ll keep it somewhere safe,” she said, and there was the faintest catch in her voice, a blink of a pause, “until Jess comes home.”

“Oh Mum,” I wanted to shout. “I’m so, so sorry, but I’m not coming back. At least that’s what I’ve been told. Haven’t you been told that too? Isn’t that why the doctor took you into that side room the other day – to tell you that there’s not much hope?”

“There’s always hope, Jessica.”

There she was again, Mrs Baxter, fixing her opinions to me as annoyingly as those sticky labels that won’t ever come off, even when you soak things in hot water.

“No, there isn’t,” I replied. “Why won’t you accept that I’m hopeless at maths? And even if I could think of a way to get out of this life versus death problem, I’d probably be hopeless at that too.”

Suddenly I couldn’t bear to be in that room for a moment longer. I couldn’t bear to stay in my house, with all the reminders of the things and people I loved.

“Sorry, Sam. I’ve got to go but I’ll be back. I promise,” I whispered.

I blew her a kiss, jumped off the bed and stumbled to the top of the stairs. I launched myself from the top step and flew through the air, landing with a soft but distinctive thud at the bottom. I heard it, and Gran and Mum must have heard it too. I looked up to see them peering over the banisters, a look of alarm on both their faces. Mum hadn’t closed the front door properly and I flailed towards the opening as if I was swimming a very bad front crawl.

At the end of the garden path I pulled up and leaned against the gatepost. By then Mum and Gran were downstairs, standing on the porch step, looking towards the road. For one stupid moment I thought they could see me – that they had actually watched me go.