114.

It’s Noah’s fifth week at Greenhills and already Maddie’s finding it hard to remember life with him at home. They’re slipping into a new routine too easily, she thinks, when she remembers how carefully, how meticulously they had to observe the demands of his timetable, to make sure that their days fitted in around his schedule.

Now, he holds a different place in their lives, the one labelled:

‘Sunday Afternoon, 2.30–4.30 p.m.’ Two hours a week, that’s all.

Maddie misses him so much. At times it feels like all the air has been sucked out of her. Now she understands the power of sorrow.

Then again, when she doesn’t have to worry about him, think about what he needs or how he might react to something out of the ordinary, the heaviness lifts and Maddie can fill her lungs and breathe.