I tiptoed down the stairs and struggled with the front door latch. I still couldn’t feel my fingers very well and the little brass catch was stiff. From the sitting room I could hear the sound of the television and occasional laughter. I wanted to storm in there and tell Sara’s parents how miserable they were making her. I wanted to tell them how much it would help me to have her at my bedside for even a few minutes. But I couldn’t do any of that because I wasn’t sure they’d even be able to hear me, and if they could, would they be brave enough to listen to some disembodied voice and do what I asked?

I’ll never know because I just didn’t have the courage to even try it. Instead, after several attempts, I got the front door open and stumbled into the cool dark, night.

I’d never liked the dark. It used to make me feel as if I was suffocating, which was why Mum always left the landing light on at home. There was a lamp post outside Sara’s house and I clung to it, bathing in the pool of yellow light, unable to think straight. What could I do now? Where could I spend the night?

“Think, Jessica. Use that brain of yours,” Mrs Baxter used to say.

I pressed my palms together as tightly as I could, wishing I could feel something other than this strange squidginess. It felt as if I was made up of the hand gel that hangs in a container at the end of my hospital bed. Maybe there was the slightest feeling of firmness beginning to creep into my lower limbs, or was it just my mind playing tricks?

I stayed very still, wrapped around the lamp post like a toddler clinging to her mother’s legs. I felt totally alone, as if I was the only person left in the whole universe. No one knew where I was, not the real me anyway. They thought that shell of a person in the hospital bed was me, but it wasn’t. I was here, pressing my cheek against the dirty metal lamp post and waiting for inspiration, waiting for the hopelessness, which had smothered me alongside the darkness, to disappear.

Eventually it did, and choices began to form a disorderly queue in my head. There were so many of them that I started to feel dizzy. I could do anything, go anywhere. I had the ultimate freedom. Four weeks ago if I’d been offered the chance to go somewhere new, to board a plane to the Bahamas or occupy a penthouse suite in the poshest hotel in the world, I’d have grabbed it. It’s strange how quickly you can change. Now, all I craved was the comfort of things, people and places that I already knew.

I considered my options:

  1. Return to the hospital bed. Definitely not. Too dangerous. Might never be able to leave again.
  2. Go home. Tempting but too upsetting and against Dictator Darren’s rules. Maybe later in the week I’d risk it when I’d seen Kelly and Nat and Yas but, for now, it wasn’t worth taking the chance. Somehow he would know and I’d probably be whisked straight back ‘up there’ to await my fate.
  3. Sneak into a hotel and try to get access to one of the rooms, preferably a luxury one. Appealing but not that easy in practice, and I’d probably end up sleeping on a sofa in the foyer. I didn’t fancy that but at least it was a possibility, if I got desperate.

“If you can’t decide what to do, walk it through.” Gran’s voice resonated in my brain like a mantra.

“I would if I could,” I muttered, “but I can’t walk properly at the moment, Gran. Not sure if it will work with floating but I’ll give it a go.”

Except that when I let go of the lamp post something strange happened. I didn’t float away and my feet were making contact with the ground. I couldn’t feel the tarmac beneath the soles of my trainers but I could see that I was standing on the pavement. I put one foot in front of the other. I was frustratingly unsteady and unsure of myself.

“For goodness’ sake,” I said to my body. “I was only just getting the hang of floating and now you go and do this to me. What’s going on?”

Secretly, though, I felt quite pleased. Even if I did look like a toddler taking her first steps, I didn’t care. Walking made me feel a bit more normal… a bit more human.

At the end of Sara’s street I automatically turned left, away from home, and joined the main road heading out of town. Cars sped past, headlights shining straight into my eyes, slipstream tugging at my hair. Everything seemed so different in the dark – noisier, smellier, less friendly. The air felt slightly chilly and I wished that I’d had time to grab a hat and coat before I left home in such a hurry. My stomach felt tight, as if I’d been laced into one of those Victorian corsets we’d tried on during our school visit to the costume museum last term.

As soon as possible I escaped the traffic and took the side roads. I walked and walked, occasionally stopping to study the vivid stained-glass windows of some of the houses, listen to owls having a conversation or to run my fingers over the smooth bark of a silver birch tree. I absorbed all of these things, gifts which I had barely noticed before, and they helped me to feel more comfortable with myself and the darkness.

I walked straight past the Tennis Club where Kelly plays twice a week and took the narrow path which cuts through to the church. On one side a scrubby patch of grass borders a shallow brook and I’ve always thought that the sound of water plinking over the pebbles sounds like someone playing a miniature xylophone.

There was a group of lads huddled together on the little bridge, taking it in turns to puff pathetically on one cigarette. Normally I’d have felt apprehensive in case they called out or – worse – decided to follow me, but I hate smoking. It killed my gramps. Instead of shrinking into myself and hoping not to be noticed, I just walked up to them, on a mission and brave as could be. I whisked the cigarette out from between the skinny one’s lips and tossed it into the brook. I’d planned to walk on as if nothing had happened but as they stood around, open-mouthed, it seemed like a good opportunity to test my vocal cords.

“Hasn’t anyone told you that smoking is really bad for you?” I said, and the words seemed to be swallowed up by the darkness.

They looked from one to another and then all around.

“Who said that?” one of them asked.

So they had heard me. I might have been invisible but I had a voice. It felt like another sign that I was still more than just some silly spirit.

“They put ‘Smoking Kills’ on the side of the packet for a reason, you know.” I felt my throat area contract as I forced my voice to be louder.

“Who’s that? Who’s there?” the skinny one asked, trying to be all brave, but I could see a muscle twitching in the side of his neck.

“Someone who knows that you should show a bit more respect for life. As my gran says, you’re a long time dead.”

That spooked them.

“Let’s get out of here,” said the one in the baseball cap, and they scarpered up the road like a load of panic-stricken chickens.

I chuckled as I carried on walking along the path, past where a small copse cast its shadows and something foraged about in the undergrowth. Courage isn’t a straight line. It can dip away from you in an instant and I felt uneasy again.

Dealing with people didn’t seem too difficult, but animals were a different matter. If Sam and Fluffy were anything to go by, animals could see me, or at least sense me, so I hurried towards the play park where Mum and Dad used to take us when we were small. It’s totally enclosed by high privet hedges and I felt a bit safer there. Dotted around the patch of grass are a small slide, some swings and those wooden animals on big coily springs. By the time he was about seven Jamie would pretend that he was too grown up for the little park, but I loved it. He always came out of his sulk in the end and threw himself head first down the slide or jumped on to the wooden horse and pretended he was riding the winner in the Grand National.

I hadn’t realised that this was where my heart was leading me, but I was so glad to be here with all of its happy memories. I sank onto one of the swings and gently rocked myself to and fro.

“If I had another chance,” I murmured, “I would never try to blot out my past. I’d never feel embarrassed about secretly playing with dolls after all my friends had shoved them in a cupboard and I would never hide in a hoodie when I went to the cinema with Mum or pretend that I’d got something else arranged when Gran suggested we went out for tea together.”

At that moment I would have given almost anything to have been able to do those things again.

My legs definitely felt heavier and more solid from the walking. I used them like a giant pendulum and found myself gaining speed, swinging higher, feeling the chill on my face as the night air rushed past. My fingers were still quite numb so I gripped the chains tightly enough to give me blisters.

“Go on, Jess! Go for it! You’ve never been brave enough before and you’ll never get the chance again.”

I felt a lump in my throat, a pitter-patter in my heart space as I propelled that swing up towards the sky until there was no going back. I threw back my head, pointed my toes and allowed the momentum to carry me up towards the stars. For a split second there was just me and the sweep of space before gravity tugged me right over the top and down the other side.

“Yes!” I called to the world. “I did it. I did it.”

For one fleeting moment my amazement at my new-found bravery blocked out everything else. I forgot about the accident and all the things I was going to miss. There was no past, no future, just now. It felt good.

The swing slowed and each weakening lurch brought me back down to earth. In the space of a few seconds I travelled from euphoria to the depths of despair. I fell onto my knees and crawled over to a bench in the corner. Now I knew what Gran meant when she talked about people having the life knocked out of them. Ninety-eight per cent of me wanted to slump on to those shabby wooden slats with their peeling paint and give up. What was the point of all this? Having a few extra days and being allowed to see my friends wasn’t going to change anything, and it was all so shattering. My eyelids felt heavy. I still wanted to say goodbye but I hadn’t been prepared for how tired all of this would make me feel.

“Don’t close your eyes,” I ordered. “Stay awake. You’ll regret it if you don’t see this through. There isn’t enough time left to sleep.”

Deep down I was scared to sleep, scared of never waking up again. I needed to stay awake for every second of every minute of every hour. I wanted to count every blade of grass, listen to every single sound echoing in the distance and smell each and every spring flower in more gardens than I could imagine, but I couldn’t fight the feeling of tiredness any more. It was overpowering. I lay down, curled up into a ball and slept.