The next time I posted a picture, Ollie liked it even though it was only my dinner, but he didn’t comment. It was Auntie Bridget’s pasta that she makes, with anchovies and tomatoes and stuff, which is well tasty, and it looked amazing because she’d put chopped parsley on it, and Auntie Bridge says chopped parsley makes everything look good, even your lentils, which otherwise look like diarrhoea. No offence, LOL.

Ollie posted a picture of a racing bike. Lime green. Single-speed.

Because we were doing more than likes now, I commented:

Cool bike

He liked my comment and commented back! He put:

Thanks

We started liking each other’s pictures and commenting. Our comments weren’t serious or anything, they were just banter. My iPhone 5C is a bit crap, but it takes quite good photos and I tried to start taking more arty shots to post. I was posting for him, no one else. That’s so embarrassing, but it’s true. Every picture I put up, I hoped he’d see it. I hoped he’d see it and think it was cool – that I was cool.

I hoped he’d like it enough to click on my heart.

I suppose we must have done that for ages, all through last summer. It was just likes and bants. He wished me happy birthday on my fifteenth birthday, good luck when I started Year 11, happy Halloween, happy Bonfire Night, whatever. Then at Christmas, he liked the picture of our Christmas tree and put:

I wanna send you a card. What’s your address? He had added a Christmas-tree emoji – sweet!

I didn’t know if he was joking or not, even though we’d been friends for, like, nearly eight months. If he was, and I DM’d my address, I’d look like a total nerd. And then I thought you’d see the card and ask me about it, so I put:

Next year! LOL. I thought for a second then added a winking-face emoji.

In January, when I got the part of Little Red, I started taking more pictures – rehearsals and things – and he liked all of those. I so wanted to ask him to meet me, but I was way too scared. Loads of girls followed him. He was one of those guys who has a million girls hanging on, like Sam Hanson, this lad in Year 12, who is a total flirt but never commits. Naomi says guys like him have all their little chicks in the nest and they give the worm to whoever has the widest beak just so they don’t give up and drop out of the nest, dead. Ollie was probably going out with some hot girl like Stella Prince, but Naomi said he’d still be keeping loads of other girls interested, waving a worm over their heads, like, Heyee, chickee, open your beak, it might be you next. I love Naomi. She’s so jokes.

I didn’t comment on too many of his pictures or ask if he was going out with anyone. That would have been a bit needy. But I kept on taking photos, kept on getting a thrill when he liked my posts. I would say he liked, say, nine out of every ten. I always felt so gutted when he didn’t like one, proper stoked when he did – I’d be, like, Yay!

Then I started messing about with the filters, taking pictures of anything I found funny or weird or lovely. I even started to take pictures of food, like on the arty food accounts. Remember when you made Rice Krispie cakes when I got my first audition and you put them on that cardboard cake stand that Richard from work gave you for your birthday, and I took a photo of that?

What are you taking a photograph for? you said.

Nothing. No reason. They just look so yummy.

I started to notice the world more, if that makes sense? And I felt like I could make a world just for me. I could cut out all the bad stuff and just pick the good. I didn’t have to tell anyone about the accident. I didn’t have to tell anyone about you, or about Dad dying. I could like other people’s lives too. I could even like older kids from drama’s posts, even kids who had gone away to uni. And that was cool.

It was all for Ollie. He had made me appreciate things, little moments that usually I’d be, like, yeah, whatevs. And no offence, Mum, but the other reason I put pictures there instead of on Facebook was because you weren’t on it. Sorry, it’s not against you or anything, I just wanted to put my stuff somewhere my mum wouldn’t see it. Or comment! Sometimes when you comment on my feed it’s such a cringe. I’ll put a funny picture of me messing around with my friends and you’ll put some moist comment like You all look so beautiful.

It’s sooooo embarrassing…

A glow from above… white… whiteness… beep beep… That’s a good sound, I think. I’m going to run towards that sound… Help… Help me…

Je suis, I am.

Tu es, you are.

Il/elle/on est… Honest, guvnor, we weren’t doin’ nothin’.

Got a French test tomorrow morning. J’ai un examen de français demain matin. Squeak. Trainers on lino, or an animal… a mouse? A cough… dry cough… a walkie-talkie?

Nous sommes, we are.

Vous êtes, you (posh) or you (lot) are.

Ils/elles sont, they (men)/they (women) are. Unless they’re mixed and then they’re men again. Begin again, Michael Finnegan. He grew whiskers on his chinnegan…

Lying on the seabed, a bed for the C… C word is rude… C u next Tuesday… The water is thick with plants. They wave at me like Dementors in Harry Potter… Mum? Mummy? Emily? Auntie Bridge?

Cough, cough. Throat-clearing or walkie-talkie? No radios at the bottom of the sea. Can’t get a dry cough under water, can you? Walk the walk, talk the talk. When I was one, I’d just begun, the day I went to sea… Ó Maidrín rua, rua, rua, rua… Daddy used to sing. Daddy made me try tea for the first time, put some sugar in, stir it up. There you go, my little red fox, get that down your neck, put the hairs on your chest…

I make you cups of tea, you make me cups of tea, tea says I’m sorry, I love you, you look tired, let me do something nice to make you smile, the kettle crackles with calcium, the water here is hard… This kettle’s buggered, Rosie. Hey, Rosie, what do you fancy for dinner? Poached or scrambled? I’ve got oven chips… Pass me a carrot, lovey, there’s a doll…

I love you.

I love you more.

Wrong. I love you more.

It’s complicated, Mum. We are complicated. I didn’t mean to be secretive. I love you more than anyone else in this world. I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I know it’s bad, whatever it is. I can feel it. It is very, very bad.