I lost my mind for a few days. Between Grandad’s death and his funeral – and I’m not sure how long that was – I lost my mind.

How can I explain? Words are so clunky and fall far short of the reality they’re meant to represent. Long gaps of time. I’d find myself staring out the window and Mum would be talking to me but I had no idea what she’d said. I had no interest in what she’d said. One time, I realised I was screaming at Mum and Dad but I can’t remember why. I don’t think I knew even then, but I remember the words.

‘You don’t understand. Why can’t you blankety understand? I said to him, Cross your heart and hope to die. And he said, Cross my heart and hope to die. Get it? I invited this. Me. My fault. Why don’t you understand?’

Mum had sometimes called my relationship with Grandad unhealthy, though I know she didn’t mean it in a nasty way. What she was talking about was how, in the normal way of things, a thirteen-year-old would spend a socially acceptable amount of time with a grandfather, but the grandad wouldn’t be a friend, wouldn’t be someone a kid would seek out and talk to about personal things. Spending time with kids my own age would have been normal, not hanging around an old people’s home. That’s just weird.

I didn’t go to school for a couple of weeks. I’d have probably been suspended, anyway, but I didn’t go so it didn’t matter. You see, Daniel Smith saw me a day or two after Grandad died. I have no idea why I was out on the streets. Maybe Mum and Dad insisted I went with them somewhere. I also can’t remember what Daniel said, but I can guess. Let’s be honest, it’s not difficult to predict what’s going to come out of Daniel’s mouth.

A tooth, it turned out. Because I punched him.

I’m not proud of this. Later I went round to his house and apologised. He never bullied me again, but I don’t know if that was because I punched him or because I apologised. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does. I’ll think about it, but not right now.

Andrew was a good friend. I know this because he largely left me alone with my feelings. He’d come round after school and tell me stories of the school day. He sent Destry’s love and I nodded and thanked him, and asked him to tell her I appreciated her concern. And I did. But here’s something strange. Or maybe it isn’t. All that love I’d felt for her, that churning feeling in my stomach, that sense of blood burning just to hear her name – well, all that hadn’t died, exactly, but it somehow didn’t seem important anymore. Destry was a stranger. Maybe she wouldn’t be in the future. Maybe we could become friends. I hoped so, because she seemed like a nice person.

But, to be honest, not a lot mattered to me at that point.

Mum and Dad were, I think, really supportive. I’m sure I wasn’t the easiest child to deal with at the time. And, of course, my dad had also lost his dad. Mum had lost her father-in-law. She often had a go at Grandad, but I knew she loved him. I didn’t give their feelings much thought, though. I was too wrapped up in my own grief to let anyone else’s in.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight.

But time passed. I ate, I slept (when the nightmares let me) and I read. Time passed.

Then it was the day of the funeral.