I love you. It hurts more than anything ever has, but I do. So don't you dare tell me I don't. Don't you ever say it again!

I shrug him off. 'Can't you just go away?" There's a moment. It has a sound in it, as if something very small got broken.

I'm me and you're you, and all of them out there are them. And we're all so different and equally unimportant.

There's a gang of boys on bikes blocking the road ahead. They've got their hoods up, cigarettes shielded. The sky's a really strange colour and there's hardly anyone else about. I slow right down. "What shall I do?" "Reverse," Zoey says. "They're not going to move." I wind down the window. "Oi!" I yell "Move your arses!" They turn languid, shift lazily to the edge of the road and grin as I blow kisses at them. Zoey looks stunned, "What's got into you?" "Nothing- I just haven't learned reversing yet.

The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I'm outside Ajay's newsagent's. I'm on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I'm massive on Handie's furniture shop, King's Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I've possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout.

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

I want you to be with me in the dark. To hold me. To keep loving me. To help me when I get scared. To come right to the edge and see what's there.