Iris throws open the car door before I've properly stopped. She has one leg on the curb when I swivel to face. 'Don't do owt stupid this time. I ain't driving to London tonight.' I keep my voice low so Má don't wake up in the passenger seat. Iris rolls her eyes. 'I love you.'

Iris raises her eyebrows, prompting me to hurry up. I wave my hand to dismiss her and she's out of the car before I can blink.

I watch her sprint up Chloe's front yard, considerably larger than ours. The door opens before she reaches it, a rectangle of orange in the night, and Chloe hugs her in welcome. Though it's nearly two in the morning, her parents appear in the narrow frame I have into the house.

Only when the door is pulled shut, leaving Iris in the embrace of the orange light, do I leave. The houses become progressively smaller and simpler until we arrive at East Trough where every home is held together with chain-link fences and prayers.

Má don't stir when I park, or after I try to wake her — Má. Má, we're home. Má. Visiting Ông and Bà is exhausting enough to put anyone in a coma. I'd be asleep too if I could. I get out myself, unlock the front door, and return to the passenger side of the car. Reaching over Má to unbuckle her seatbelt, I ease her out of the seat. She's so short that she's easy to carry.

The house in its minimalism greets us as much as a morgue would. Má is a body that always horrifies me more when she's alive.

I get her to bed and, just as I turn around, her fingers stretch. They only brush my wrist before her arm falls, too tired to strain. 'Don't leave. Please don't leave me, Dean.'

Her face blurs behind my tears. I've always thought she meant him dying, that she saw me as a ghost from the future who she could still bargain with, but she's always meant the mundane interpretation.

I return to the bed enough to kiss her forehead. 'I'm not going anywhere, Hue.'

            As soon as I step inside, my breaths evade me. It's like I've punctured my lungs and no matter how deep I inhale, I can't get enough air in. Everywhere I look, I'm assaulted by mess. It's quite possible that everything we own has been taken and left out.

It's also dead quiet.

Leaving my bag at the door, I take off my shoes. 'Love?'

There's no response. Ziri must've gone to sleep, which disappoints me possibly more than it should — though it feels like I've not seen him for years, it's actually only been a few days. And it's the middle of the night, of course, he's asleep. And if he's asleep, maybe he's not as manic as I thought.

As I turn on the light, all I'm welcomed by is mess. Sweat collects on my skin and I take off my hoodie, grateful I don't have to hide my tattoos, but it barely makes a difference.

I don't even know where to start clearing it up: the table's has been transformed into a miniature model of the city skyline, created with everything from eyeshadow pallets to stacks of photos, a bottle of hobby glue balanced on top of a skyscraper of craft supplies. There's no food, though. Some laundry is drying on the clothes horse in front of the telly, the rest forgotten in the hamper by the ironing board, which in turn is currently balancing five of our plants on it along with a bag of potting mix.

I turn and my heart leaps into my throat. Ziri is curled up in the corner of the kitchenette, wrapped in one of the many blankets Sonia has crocheted for us, tight as a straitjacket. His tear-streaked face and shaking hands are all that are visible from below it. What I initially thought were rubbish littered on the floor around him are bits of lemon, at least three fruit torn into chunks.

I bump into one of the chairs as I rush to his side, dropping onto the floor beside him. 'What's wrong? Are you hurt?' I should be happy to see him. But the orange walls are invisible behind the alarms that paint them red and my body stays rigid.

'No.' He don't look at me.

Hugging his knees, Ziri winds tighter over himself. His mouth opens, stretched over his forearm, ready to bite. He's frozen there, in the moments before blood. His whole body is shaking from the effort it takes to keep his teeth from digging in. He's going to lose. I know he is. He does too.

Then I understand. I seize another lemon from the fruit bowl and shove it between his jaws just as they shut. His teeth break the skin as effortlessly as they would his own, but it's juice that rushes out, darkening the ashy skin of his hands as it runs down between his knuckles.

It must work well enough, the bitterness, because Ziri holds the lemon with both hands and bites until it's cut in half. A piece is broken into his hands in the shape of his mouth. I can see him calculate the chances he'll manage to eat it to avoid embarrassment, but he opens his jaws to let the other half fall amongst the rest on the floor, gutted and torn.

'I stopped takin my meds.'

Silence.

'When?'

'Three weeks ago.'

His voice resurfaces in my mind: "I've been medicated since I was thirteen, Miles. I don't even know who I really am." Fuck. Fuck. I should've realised. He were manic enough by then to stop. How did I not realise? Why didn't I check? I'm supposed to take better care of him.

The medicine bottles are standing on the counter. Seeing my glance, Ziri explains, 'I thought I could take them all now.'

I lurch, my body too quick to move so that I don't have time to decide whether to shove my fingers down his throat or upend the bottles over the floor and end up bumping into him. 'You didn't do that, did you?'

'No.'

I still check. The bottles are over half full.

I move chunks of lemon off my path, hissing when juice slips into the wound on my thumb, and shift closer to him. 'Are you hungry? When were the last time you ate?'

'It's Ramadan.'

'Love... it's the middle of the night.' He stares at me, entirely nonplussed, and I want to yell. Yell at the universe for making me do this. Why do I have to do this? Why don't I get to live with him in his delusions? 'It's like four in the morning. You should eat suhoor.'

Ziri ignores my prompt. 'I don't remember.' It means no. It means he probably hasn't eaten since I left for Leeds. He winds tighter into himself, pulling the blanket taut over his skull. 'I can't remember anythin. I don't remember stoppin my meds. I don't– Why would I–?' His voice cracks and disappears. His eyes are so saturated with misery that I almost start to cry. 'Was it you?'

'What?'

'It was you, wasn't it? Did you mess up my meds on purpose?'

'Why would I–?'

'Because you want somethin to fix. You have to feel needed — I don't have to need you, I want you in my life. But you can't wrap your tiny little brain around that, can you?' I have no idea how I could respond. His anger is so sudden that I can't process what's happening. 'Or what, is this some sort of complicated way of breakin up with me? If you wanna break up with me, just say that. You don't have to come up with a whole scheme.'

'Ziri...'

He transforms from fury back to agony so quickly it feels as though my brain has deleted a chunk of time and I've skipped from point A to point C. Before I know it, he's a puddle on the kitchen floor. Each sob is a rib wrenched from his chest.

This stage is always the worst, the part where mania and depression overlap, the part where he realises what's happening but can't stop it, where he becomes aware of the fact that reality has evaded him. He'll have to go to the doctor. They'll probably put him on antipsychotics again. They might even section him for a few days. He's terrified.

And he's right: I just want to fix it, I just want him not to feel bad.

I go to dry his cheeks but Ziri slaps my hand away. He shakes his head, clawing at the crochet blanket over his head until he yanks it off. 'I cut my hair.'

I can't disguise my shock. What's left is a patchy buzzcut.

Ziri's tears flow in brooks down his cheeks. 'I tried to do braids and they refused to look good and I got so frustrated and then I realised how insane is it that I'm here havin a breakdown over how to style my hair when I could just cut it off and not have to think about it.' He shakes his head. 'Seven years, and it's all gone.'

It'll break him. Once the mania has faded and he properly understands what he's done, it'll break him much worse than now. He's been growing his hair since the first time he were put on suicide watch; it'll feel as though he's right back there.

This is my fault. I should've come home earlier. If I had any respect for myself, I whould've left the night of Má and Bà's kitchen argument. I could've stopped him.

'Love–'

'Stop it. Just stop. You're tired.'

'I'm fine–'

'You're tired.' He covers himself entirely in the blanket, like he hopes to waste away, bury himself in our kitchen floor. 'And you're on holiday: you're supposed to be relaxin, not dealin with me or your mum or whatever. What's wrong with you? Just go to sleep. The world won't end.'

How can he say that? I take a nap and when I wake up Iris, Má, and Ziri might all be dead.

I don't get to verbalise that before Ziri stands up, abruptly stoic. The bouncing of his emotions is typical of his episodes but I always struggle to keep up. 'I can't right now,' he says with a flick of his wrist. 'I'm gonna go stay with my parents.'

'No–'

'I need some space. I'm sorry, I just can't take it right now.'

He's leaving. He's leaving. He's leaving! My heart goes haywire.

'I got ya summat.'

'Stop tryna talk like me,' I say, miserably. The comedic relief only drives the knife deeper into my chest but neither of us can help it. 'That's bare not what I sound like, innit.'

I stand up to watch Ziri take three flower bouquets out of the vases he has already put them in, crammed onto the TV bench. He hands them to me one at a time. 'This is for your birthday. This is for our anniversary comin up. This one just because I miss you.'

Are these break-up flowers? Is he letting me down easy? He's leaving.

I don't manage to say owt. I just stand there in the middle of our indescribably messy flat, with the flowers dripping water onto my socks.

'I'm sorry about the mess. I was makin a scrapbook as an anniversary present but then I had to do the washin and then I remembered I have to get flowers before the shop closes and I was at the shop and they had the cutest pot.' He lifts it from the windowsill where our ivy is planted. It's shaped like the bottom half of a chicken. 'Look, it has legs.' Ziri's excitement is a mayfly: dead in the blink of an eye. 'Then I started repottin all our plants and it just...' He indicates at the chaos. 'Please don't clean. I'll come back to clean, I promise.'

Back to clean and pack up his things?

'I'll drive you.' My voice tastes like sawdust.

Ziri shakes his head as he shoves on his flip-flops. All he has with him is his phone. 'I'll ring Dal. He never sleeps.'

Dropping the flowers on a chair, I stride across the flat so that when he opens the door I push it back shut. 'I'm sorry.' I hang my head. 'I can't let you go out by yourself. Phone Dal but he has to pick you up from the door. I can't let you go out by yourself.'

He'll hate me for it. But I have enough experience to know that if left alone like this, he'll end up hurt whether it's intentional or not. And that would actually be the end of the world.