90

Alice

I’m absolutely shattered.

Charlie’s revelation yesterday threw all three of us into a whirlwind of heightened emotions, and it’s been very difficult to stop them spinning us around.

Mum went to bed early last night, exhausted from the whole thing, and the two of us stayed up until very late, checking on her from time to time, both frightened of leaving her alone.

“We have to sort this,” Charlie told me at one point, long after the sun had set. “We can’t keep doing this to her.”

“I know that,” I snapped. But I couldn’t see a way clear through the thick forest of our problems.

In the end, both of us were so tired and irritable and upset that we decided to sleep on it and talk again the next day.

I lay awake for about an hour, thinking about Kip, missing him, and feeling miserable, and fighting with myself because he’s my best friend, and I wanted to call him and talk it over with him, and I couldn’t. Eventually I crashed out, slept too long, and I’ve woken with a headache, grouchy