Are you ever afraid to go to sleep? Afraid of what comes next?” He smiles a sad little smile and I swear it’s like he knows. “Sometimes I’m afraid of what I’m leaving behind,” he says.

"And I love you too." His fingers skate the edge of my jaw, dance briefly over my lips. "You should know that. You have to know that."

I need him to know that I came for him. I need him to know that somehow, at some point in the tunnels, I began to love him.

He is no longer mine to lose, but the grief is there, a gnawing sense of disbelief.

That is what Alex is now: a shadow-boy

I love you. Remember. And someday, I will find you again.

My heart shoots into my throat every time I think I see his loping walk, or catch sight of some floppy brown hair on a boy - but it's never him, and each time it isn't, my heart does a reverse trajectory down into the very pit of my stomach.