The light is heart-breaking.

Dad sips tea by the bed. I want to tell him that he's missing AGT, but I'm not sure that he is. Not sure of the time.

He's got a snack as well. Cream crackers with piccalilli sauce and old mature cheddar. I'd like to want that. To be interested in taste – the crumb and dry crackerness of things.

He puts down the plate when he sees me looking and picks up my hand. "Beautiful girl," he says.

I tell him thanks.

But my lips don't move and he doesn't seem to hear me.

Then I say, I was just thinking about that netball post you made me when I got into the school team. Do you remember how you got the measurements wrong and made it too high? I practised so hard with it that I always overshot at school and they chucked me out of the team again.

But he doesn't seem to hear that either.

So then I go for it.

Dad, you played a game with me, even though you hated it and wished I'd take up a sport. You learned how to keep a stamp collection because I wanted to know. For hours you sat in hospitals and never, not once, complained. You brushed my hair. You gave up work for me, friends for me, four years of your life for me. You never moaned. Hardly ever. You let me have Tobias. You let me have my list. I was outrageous. Wanting, wanting so much. And you never said, "that's enough. Stop now."

I've been wanting to say that for a while

Caleb peers down at me. "Hello," he says. "How are you?"

I blink at him.

He sits in the chair and studies me. "Can't you actually talk any more?"

I try and tell him that yes, of course, I can. Is he stupid, or what? He sighs, gets up and goes over to the window. He says, "Do you think I'm too young to have a girlfriend?"

I tell him yes.

"Because loads of my friends have got one. They don't actually go out. Not really. They just text each other." He shakes his head in disbelief. "I'm never going to understand love."

But I think he already does. Better than most people.

Christina says, "Hey, Caleb."

He says, "Hey."

She says, "I've come to say goodbye. I mean, I know I did already, but I thought I'd say it again."

"Why?" he says. "Where are you going?"

I like the weight of Mum's hand in mine.

She says, "If I could swap places with you, I would, you know."

Then she says, "I just wish I could save you from this."

Maybe she thinks I can't hear her.

She says, "I could write a story for one of those true story magazines, about how hard it was to leave you. I don't want you thinking it was easy."

When I was twelve I looked places on a map to see how far away they were from home and I would dream about going to these places as I grew up.

Instructions for Mum
Don't give up on Cal. Don't you ever slide away from him. I'll haunt you if you do. I'll move your furniture around, throw things at you and scare you stupid. Be kind to Dad. Serious. I'm watching you.

She gives me a sip of iced water. She gently places a cold flannel on my forehead.

Then she says, "I love you."

Like three drops of blood falling onto the snow.

Tobias gets into his camp bed. It creaks. Then it stops.

I remember him sucking my breast. It wasn't long ago. We were in this room, both in my bed, and I held him in the crook of my arm and he nestled against me and I felt like his mother.

He promised he'd come to the edge. I made him promise. But I didn't know he'd lie next to me at night like a good boy scout. I didn't know it would hurt to be touched, that he'd be too scared to hold my hand.

He should be out in the night with some girl with lovely curves and breath like oranges.

Instructions for Tobias
Look after no one except yourself. Go to university and make lots of friends and get drunk. Forget your door keys. Laugh. Eat pizza for breakfast. Miss lectures. Be irresponsible.

Tobias says, "Goodnight, Tris".

Goodnight, Tobias.

"I phoned the nurse. She says we should top up the morphine with Oramorph."

"Won't anyone come out?"

"We can manage."

"She was calling for her mum again when you were on the phone."

I keep thinking of fires of smoke rising off the crazed jangle of bells and the surprised faces of a crowd as if something has been snatched from them.

"I'll sit with her if you like, Tobias. Go down and watch TV, or catch up on some sleep."

"I said I wouldn't leave her."

It's like turning off the lights one by one. Rain drizzles gently onto the sand and bare legs as Dad puts the finishing touches to the castle and even though it's raining me and Caleb collect seawater in a bucket for the moat and later when the sun comes out we put flags on each tower so they flutter and we get ice cream from the hut at the top of the dunes and later still Dad sits with us as the tide comes in and together we try and push all that water back out so the people in the castle don't drown.

"Go on, Tobias. None of us will be any good to her if we're exhausted."

"No, I'm not leaving."

When I was four I almost fell down the shaft of a tin mine and when I was five the car rolled over on the motorway and when I was seven we went on holiday and the gas ring blew out in the caravan and nobody noticed.

I've been dying all my life.

"She's more peaceful now."

"Hmm."

I hear only the fraction of things. Words fall down crevices, get lost for hours, then fly back up and land on my chest.

"I'm grateful to you."

"For what?"

"For not backing off. Most boys would've run a mile by now."

"Well, I love her."