Callie eventually opens the door. I fall into her hallway. I’m crying but I’ve gone past the point where I care. She doesn’t wrap her arms around me. She doesn’t ask me what’s wrong. She just slumps down onto the floor next to me, leaving the front door wide open. I wonder if Mum’s phoned her, to warn her. I try to breathe properly but I’m still gulping. I’ve been keeping it in all the way over on the bus and I can’t any longer.

‘He’s dead,’ I tell her. She looks panicked, then bursts into tears too.

‘When? When?’

The house sounds empty. I wonder where her family are.

‘This afternoon. We had to sing to him. I sang to him.’

‘What? Why did you sing to him?’ She looks confused.

‘Because that’s what his mum wanted.’ I feel sick, shaky and drained.

‘Whose mum? What are you going on about?’ Callie’s got her hand on my arm now.

‘Kofi.’

She snatches her arm away. ‘Shit! I thought you meant Nonno! I thought Nonno had died. Oh my God!’ She looks relieved.

‘I never said Nonno. He’s doing much better.’

‘You should have said. You should have said it was that kid.’ She points at me, like I’ve got something wrong again.

‘He’s not just some kid. He’s Kofi.’ I wipe my face and sit up, my back against their radiator. She does the same. We look at each other.

‘What happened?’ she asks eventually.

‘Complications, septic shock.’ I still don’t really know what it means.

‘And you sang to him? As he died?’ She looks horrified. ‘You sat there and sang?’

‘Yes, I guess. I mean, I think the machine was doing all the breathing and stuff for him. But yeah, we sang to him.’

‘Could he hear you? I mean, was there any point?’

‘I hope he could hear us. Even if he couldn’t, his mum could and I know it helped her,’ I answer.

‘I just can’t believe you did that. You sat there and sang to him with other people in the room? How?How did you not just break down or run out of the room? I don’t know you at all. I thought I knew everything about you.’

For a moment I think she means it like she did before, in my room, but it sounds different, it sounds like understanding. ‘You keep on surprising me,’ she says, shuffling a little closer to me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, carefully putting my arm around her. ‘I’ll try to stop.’

‘No, don’t,’ she says after a bit.

‘Alright then.’

‘Alright then.’ And we sit there like that, on her hallway floor, half crying, half not, talking about everything, with the front door wide open, as the late summer evening creeps in around us.