I avoid Alex for the rest of the day and when I get on the bus I don't get off at my usual stop. I sit there; rigid, tense, cold, numb... 

I keep going until I reach the hospital. With all this anger still coursing through my veins I go right up to the front desk and bring my palms down so hard on the counter. It makes the nurse sitting there jump.

"I want to see my Dad!" I yell. 

It sounds so out of place in that silent, sterilised space.

"Okay, honey... What's your Dad's name?" The nurse blinks up at me through her glasses. She's young, probably only around twenty. She has dark brown, tight curls pulled back from her face and brown skin with a few darker freckles over her nose and cheeks. She looks kind, concerned. I instantly feel terrible for shouting at her.

"Marcus Riley." I mutter, drawing my hands away and holding them behind my back.

The nurse types into her computer then adjusts her glasses and looks up at me pityingly. "It says here that he requested that you didn't visit."

"I know," I swallow hard, "but I'm not leaving until he sees me."

The nurse's look of compassion is almost too much for me to bear, but I just continue to stare at her, knowing that if I break my concentration, I'll lose control and cry and that's the last thing I want to do.

"I'll go talk to him..." The nurse says quietly, slipping out of her seat. Her rubber soled shoes squeak down the hallway. I chew my nails distractedly, wincing at the taste of blue nail polish. As an unstoppable nail-biter, I swear each different colored polish tastes distinct. Blue tastes like super acidic marmalade.

"He has to see me, he has to..." I whisper over and over to myself.

I haven't been here since he took me off of his visitor list. Mom tried to explain to me why he did it. It still makes no sense to me.

The nurse comes back and overhears my little mantra. She must think I'm just as crazy as him.

"It's okay, honey, he's waiting for you."

I nod in an odd jerk. I wasn't expecting this. I thought it would be more of a fight, but maybe after all this time he actually misses me? I follow the nurse through ultra-clean, bleach-scented corridors to a large room filled with well-used armchairs. There are patients dotted around, some in regular clothes, others in pyjamas, sitting reading, or playing pool. It all looks so normal. You might even believe it's some weird kind of resort or maybe a play.

I don't recognize him at first. He's sitting in an armchair facing out of the window looking over the hospital car park. His thinning hair is rumpled, and he's wearing an old, striped dressing gown. His glasses are dirty, and he's grown a short, scruffy beard over his concave cheeks. I try hard to justify this image with the one in my mind. It's been a year since I last saw him. It may as well have been twenty.

Quietly I walk over and sit in a plastic chair facing him. The nurse says something I don't hear then backs away to give us some privacy.

"So, you came..." He says, in a slow, ponderous way as if he isn't much used to talking to anyone. His eyes dart nervously behind the smudged glasses and he rubs his chin as if to smooth down the hair or make it disappear altogether.

"I know you didn't want me to." I place my hands on my knees. I'm reminded inescapably of my interview for Mont Michel, how I practised for hours to sit just so, like Mia in the Princess Diaries. I so wanted to be poised... Ready for anything.

He swallows, goes to rub his face again, thinks better of it, then sits on his hands to keep them still. 

"I didn't want you to see me like this." He explains after a painfully long pause.

I take a deep breath, feeling angrier than ever. "That's what Mom said, but I wouldn't've cared. I just wanted to see you. I always want to see you."

"Your mother..."

"Don't..." I give my head a little shake. I won't hear him blame it on her.

The silence between us is deafening.

"So, how's school?" He tries to sound bright, as easy and light as if we were sitting at the breakfast table after school.

"I... Need... To understand what..." I begin haltingly. "What... I did wrong... Why Mom and me we weren't... Enough... Or..."

He shakes his head roughly, leans forward then rubs his eyes beneath the lenses.

"Harlow you've got to understand I..." He trails off, unable to find the words. "It's not as if I..."

I look at him, waiting, my eyes shimmering behind their own glass of tears. He stretches out one shaking hand towards me. In my mind I beg him to touch me. To grab my hand in his, but I don't move. 

He has to want it. 

He has to want me.

"I can't do this." He jumps up all of a sudden and strides away, his robe flying out behind him like a cape.

I'm left there, struck dumb. 

The nurse from before has been hovering nearby and she rushes over and says something, but again I can't hear it. There's a ringing in my ears that blocks everything out. She leaves and I sit there for a long time, staring at the place where my Dad had been. Every now and then a tear rolls down my cheek, but inside I feel nothing.

"Harlow..." The soft voice of my Mom calls me back to reality.

"He didn't want me... I thought if he saw me..." I stammer.

All my energy saps out of me as she wraps her arms around me in a fierce embrace.

"I know, baby, I know... Let's go home, come on."

I follow her as if in a dream. 

Mom's car is parked near the Maternity Ward where she works, and it feels like a very long walk to get there. I look back at the pale, misshapen blocks of hospital buildings. Could he see this part of the car park from up there? Was it Mom's car he had been looking at? 

Who knows...

We get in the car. Mom manages to coax it to start then sets off at her usual break-neck pace. The day they put speed cameras in Stanhope is the day my Mom loses her license.

"I'm sorry Mom... I know I wasn't supposed to." I say eventually, pleating and un-pleating the fabric of my school skirt.

"It's okay, sweetheart, you don't have to explain." Her voice is so understanding it almost makes it worse. I wish she was mad at me, at least then I could shout and get mad and not feel so empty.

"I need to find a way to fix it, if I can then..."

Mom suddenly slams her foot down hard on the break and jerks the car to a stop on the side of the road.

"What are you doing?!" I cry, hands out to stop myself ramming into the dash.

Horns blare behind us but my Mom doesn't seem to hear them.

"You can't save anyone, Harlow!" Mom's voice is urgent and passionate. "There's nothing you or anyone else can do that can fix someone. You mustn't ever think like that! All you can do is be good to people... Listen to them... Get them help if you can. But they have to want that help, you can't make them want it, you understand? People aren't puzzles to solve. You can love them, every complicated bit of them but sometimes you can't understand what they do or why. Let alone try to control it. You'll destroy yourself like that... Believe me."

I don't know what to say.

She's looking out of the windshield as if trying to see something that isn't there. I look with her but it's just the road and quiet apartment buildings off to the side and that's it. She lets out a long, ragged breath then turns on her indicator and merges back into traffic, heading home in silence.

This day feels like it lasted a week. I head upstairs as soon as we get through the door, dying to lie down and forget everything if I can. I push open the door to my room, ready to kick off my shoes and fall into bed but someone's already there, sitting, waiting...

"Alex! How did you get in here?"

He smiles sheepishly, putting down one of my old books he'd been reading. "You keep your key under the mat, you should definitely stop doing that."

"Mom always says there's nothing to steal." I put down the bag and sit heavily in my desk chair. "I'm sorry Alex... I don't think I can do this right now."

He puts up a hand to stop me. "I'm not here to argue, I promise. I just want to say I'm sorry. I didn't know about your Dad."

I shake my head, exhausted. "I never told you. Vanessa only knew because I had to stay with her for a while after he... Well, after he tried to..."

"You don't have to explain. I just wanted to say I'm sorry. So sorry... For a lot of things and I needed to tell you..."

"Please, Alex," I cut in, "you don't have to be sorry, let's just pretend we never argued, it's okay, really. You didn't know."

It's quiet for a moment and I can hear a bird singing somewhere outside of my window.

"I guess there's just some things that are too hard to say out loud... I get it." He eventually says, soft as the lilting birdsong.

There was something else, something almost frantic in his eyes, but by this time my eyelids were so heavy I could barely keep them open.

Alex's lips part, as if he's about to say something but can't quite form the words with his tongue.

"So... See you at school tomorrow?" I tilt my head to the side in what he would call 'classic Harlow style'.

He nods, mechanically standing, leaving the room and shutting the door noiselessly behind him. I couldn't help feeling that there was something else, something more he wanted me to know, but I'm so tired I feel like I can't think beyond just getting into bed and crashing. 

Whatever he wanted to say I guess will have to remain felt but unsaid, like so much else in this catastrophic mess of a day...