First it was The Wolsey Clinic. Six months or thereabouts. Then it was Hazlewood Priory. He was there for a long time. Then, after a long gap, it was… what was the last one called? Hillier Private Hospital, that was it, but he wasn’t there for long. These places had their own stationery, gyms, a pool, and cable TV in each room. They were more like a hotel than a mental hospital. Mother didn’t like him calling them that, but that’s what they all were, after all. Once the lights went out, and the whispering started, you couldn’t call them anything else.

He went to The Wolsey straight from the burns unit. His left hand, the one they’d had to pick the vinyl out of, was more or less useless, and would be until he had more skin grafts, and the painkillers made him sleep. When he wasn’t sleeping, he still tended to keep his eyes closed, and he didn’t speak a word. Not for weeks.

He wasn’t quite the youngest patient at The Wolsey. There were at least five girls, possibly his age or older, but so shrunken with anorexia they looked like infants. They hung around together and talked about food, huddled over their phones doing image searches of burgers. David thought once or twice that possibly the hospital staff should know about this, and he even thought about telling them himself, but in the end he didn’t. It wasn’t anyone else’s business really. The smiling, complacent staff were big on privacy, and the patients were called guests, and you didn’t really have to do anything or see anyone if you didn’t want to, and David didn’t want to.

He stayed there until Christmas, then he was deemed well enough to go home.

When he saw what Tony had done to his old room, he retaliated by setting fire to the Christmas tree, and didn’t even try to pretend it was an accident. He made sure that he stood far enough away that the flying, sappy bristles didn’t catch him. They caught Father though, and David was sorry for that because he never wanted to hurt his father, and the look on his face, as he batted away the flames that clung to his sweater, haunted David for a long time.

* * *

He was only at home for a week before his parents decided that he needed to go back to hospital, but not The Wolsey – this time he was sent to Hazlewood, which was a hundred miles away and used to be a monastery or something. Father said that it was the best place for him; he’d get better care… He wants me as far away as possible, thought David, with no malice.

At Hazlewood he thought about writing to Father – and even began – but the letters didn’t make any sense. He was on too much medication and his thoughts weren’t ordered enough. He kept the half-finished letters though. He kept everything from this period because it seemed that it might be Significant at some point, but he didn’t know how.

He liked Hazlewood more than The Wolsey because there was more of a routine, and his room was white and empty, like his room at home, but smaller. In The Wolsey there’d been pictures on the wall (in non-shatter plastic, fixed to the wall with industrial-strength brackets) and brightly patterned curtains, which he found offensive, but in Hazlewood they got it right. Everything was much more restful, and the people were older too, and less likely to try to talk to you. They had more about them, even though some of them were really very mad indeed. David liked the other patients, enjoyed watching them. He watched one man more than most – a tall, thin dignified character with a twitch in one eye and a crooked mouth that made it seem as if he was winking at you, that you had some humorous secret in common.

The Man with the Twitch stole things, stored things, just like David did. Little things like soap, a phone charger, and three spoons (plastic – not able to be sharpened) a day from the cafeteria, and hid them all under his mattress; David had seen him through a crack in the door. Doors were always open at Hazlewood, and it was remarkable how little people seemed to notice they were being spied on. Every two days, the staff would change everyone’s sheets, and everything that The Man with the Twitch had accumulated would be quietly returned to their original owners, the spoons presumably disposed of (I mean, who knew what he did with the spoons?) and no one said a word about it, not even The Man with the Twitch, who serenely started all over again, beginning with the three spoons from the cafeteria.

David found this quiet defiance immensely interesting and comforting. He thought of The Man with the Twitch as a walking, winking parable, the moral of which was beautifully simple: abide, never change, anything you lose can always be found again. And therein lay contentment. The Man with the Twitch was very, very contented, David could tell.

The Man with The Twitch, the quiet, karmic silence of the staff, the white, empty room… it all did David the power of good. He understood now that everything had been necessary: being tormented by Marc, by Tony; the fire – both fires. He had to be forcibly taken away from that hell and placed in the comfortable limbo of Hazlewood in order to prepare himself for the paradise of his true vocation: Jenny. He had to suffer to be free.

He asked his psychiatrist if he’d be able to have an iPad? Mum wanted to buy him the new one, and, of course, he knew he wasn’t well enough to go back to school, but he’d like to keep up with the GCSE syllabus? Keep his hand in? The psychiatrist smiled, and not only allowed him to have an iPad but also allowed him to keep it in his room, and have unmonitored access to it. Private hospitals were great that way. If you had the money, you could do anything.

‘Hazlewood works wonders!’ Mother told him. ‘Dad is so pleased; we’re so proud of you!’

As soon as he got the iPad, he found her. It was easy. Facebook. Twitter. Instagram. Jenny had them all. He was both frustrated and gratified by how little of her life she put online though… Jenny wasn’t a daily communicant, unlike her friend Freddie who cropped up on her page all the time, a tubby, grinning clown that David disliked on sight.

Freddie Lees-Hill was one of those idiots that posted everything: his address, his phone number, everything. He friended everyone who asked and appeared to have no filter. He posted annoying GIFs of people double-taking in sitcoms, and religiously photographed his meals; he overused punctuation. During the holidays, he was for ever ‘drinking anything alcoholic’ with Jenny Holloway, which deepened David’s dislike into hatred. What was she drinking for? It was illegal to drink until you were eighteen anyway, wasn’t it? The law was there for a reason. David would sit, cross-legged in his hospital bed, frowning worriedly at the screen. He stayed away for – what was it now? A year? – and she took up with someone so obviously beneath her. That Freddie was gay didn’t make David feel any better… For the first time, David thought that if he’d only managed not to set fire to Tony’s belongings, and hadn’t killed the Christmas tree, then that would be him there, ‘Enjoying fireworks with bestie Jennifer Holloway’, instead of this fat little prick. It was… wrong. It was just wrong.

From Hazlewood, David watched Jenny do her A levels (two Bs and a D – she could have done better. Freddie probably distracted her), mourned when she accepted a place at a second-string university to study psychology (she was better than Leicester, she was better than psychology, which – and he knew this from experience – was an absolute con), cheered up considerably when she dropped out and moved back home. If she was back in the village, he’d be able to see her there, soon. All he had to do was get out of hospital. But before that, he needed to prepare the ground, and this presented a problem.

If he, as David Crane, sent her a friend request, there was a good chance that she’d turn him down. After all, he didn’t know what rumours might have circulated about him in his absence; he didn’t know who knew what about the cause of the fires and why he left school before GCSEs. If he asked Mother, she might think he was getting… anxious again, and if she thought that, he might have to stay at Hazlewood longer. But just gleaning bits of information about her from Freddie’s page was impossibly frustrating… he had to have some kind of direct contact with her.

And so Ryan Needham arrived on the scene. A tall, rangy basketball player who liked to travel, Ryan was studying at the University of Durham. Good old Ryan.

The best thing about Ryan was that he was almost, very nearly, real. Ryan was indeed a basketball player (he didn’t live in Durham but in Idaho). He really had studied anthropology (at a private college in Illinois dedicated to spreading Christian teachings of creationism). But Ryan Needham wasn’t, strictly speaking, called Ryan Needham. He was Tyler Dodds, a fundamentalist Christian sports enthusiast who, once upon a time, had greatly overshared on Myspace before he abandoned it, leaving his entire life preserved there – like an insect in amber… three years’ worth of photographs that David used to create Ryan the Extreme Sports Enthusiast; Ryan the Effortlessly Cool scholar. He grew very attached to Ryan, very proud of his popularity. After giving him fifty or so friends from other fake profiles David created other, real people, wanting to be friends with him too. Most of them pouting girls with heavily filtered profile pictures and obvious self-esteem issues.

David let Ryan accumulate a few hundred friends, real and fake, before targeting a sad, chubby cutter of a girl called Immy – a girl Freddie Lees-Hill knew from university. Immy was pathetically grateful to Ryan for his faintly sleazy comments on her public photos (‘Looking hot!!!!!’), and soon (too soon, the girl had no notion of how pitiful she seemed) she was confiding in him… long private messages that David didn’t bother reading to the end… ‘my parents are divorced/step brother abused me/ boo hoo etc’. Immy made David feel a bit sick, and he grew to loathe her; but she was useful because she could lead him to Freddie.

Finally, after a few months of Immy banging on about her anxiety and calorie counting, David made the decision to have Ryan message Freddie directly.

Bit weird… you don’t know me… worried about Immy? Seems depressed… is she OK?

Ryan was nice like that.

And that’s how Freddie and Ryan became friends.

They even spoke on the phone – though not often. Ryan was from Brighton, so David would have to practice the accent for a few hours before speaking to Freddie and he always kept the conversation short, and let Freddie do most of the talking. Afterwards, he would feel murderously angry – things were going so slowly, Freddie didn’t talk enough about Jenny and really what was the point what was the point and he really needed to get out of this place just get out and find her, meet her. Then he’d make himself think of The Man with The Twitch, and he’d calm down. Because he would meet her. He would be with her. He just had to be patient, complete every level, earn his destiny. This was purgatory. He wouldn’t be here for ever.

In the end, Ryan didn’t contact Jenny; she messaged him. She was suspicious; she was worried for her friend, and she didn’t hold back – Why didn’t he have any pictures of himself as a child? No one was ever tagged in the photos either, and the library-bound, scholarly Ryan in updates didn’t seem to match the intrepid Ryan of the pictures. How did he have the time to snowboard in what looked a lot like Utah? Kayak in a suspiciously sunny lake district? Run the Berlin marathon? The picture wasn’t even of Berlin anyway; the car number plate was American.

Who are you really? She asked.

And David genuinely had no idea what to say. On the one hand, he was mortified that his carefully laid plan had already fallen into tatters; but at the same time strangely proud that she’d seen through him when no one else had. The more he thought about it, the more fitting that seemed, because it proved her basic superiority to others.

She messaged him.

I’m really intrigued, what makes people do things like this?

That sounded hostile. Did that sound hostile? David suffered through waves of icy panic. He lay on his bed, with his head mashed into the pillow, going over every mistake he’d made, and every way he’d underestimated her. When it was time to take his medication, he pretended to swallow and kept the capsule under his tongue, and spat it out into the toilet, once the nurse left. He had to keep a clear head. He had to think of the best way forward.

She messaged him again.

Freddie really likes you, talks about you all the time. He might even like the Real You if you come clean to him?

Before he knew what he was doing, he’d messaged back.

It’s you I’m interested in though not him.

There was a long pause, during which David dug his nails into his wrists, folded over one another in a Möbius strip of anxiety.

Why? She answered eventually.

That simple syllable told him that she hadn’t automatically written him off. Wincingly, he relaxed his grip and gently massaged the little half-moon cuts on each wrist.

I didn’t want to be weird. I created a fake profile just for fun, but then I saw that this guy was actually your friend, and I wanted to message you.

Yes, but why?

Was she fishing for compliments? David frowned at the screen. Full disclosure? Full disclosure. Well, full-ish.

I went to school with you.

Which school?

He named the one in the village.

You were in my form. We met once in the graveyard. David Crane. You probably don’t remember me.

Oh I do.

She left a five-minute pause, then.

Why not just message me/friend me as you are? Freddie’s really into you. Are you even gay?

No! And I didn’t want to lead him on or anything, but now I can’t get out of it, it’s all been a mistake I can see that now.

He took a break to hyperventilate, wishing that he hadn’t spat out his medication. A few hours of warm, fuzzy catatonia seemed very welcome right about now.

I’m so sorry.

Don’t panic. Send me a picture to prove who you are. As for Freddie, we can work something out to let him down easily. I don’t want him to be hurt either.

She wanted his picture? Why? He had to go outside to take a decent photo, and when he sent it to her she immediately responded with:

Are you in a hospital?

How did she know? He peered at the picture – at the top left you could just see an alarmed door and half of the sign for Cecelia Wing. Shit, she was sharp…

I volunteer at a rehabilitation ward.

He replied, all the time thinking she’ll see through this, she’ll see through this:

I had a stroke when I was a child and that’s why I volunteer. I had such good care, I’m just giving back really.

He typed, wincing, worrying that he was over-egging things.

God. That sounds harsh.

David passed his iPad from one sweaty hand to the other.

Please don’t tell Freddie. I feel really bad about all this. I’m not a bad person, honestly. I’ll take the profile down. I’ll do it now.

No, don’t do that, that would be weird and it’d hurt F more. Just dial it down and don’t lead him on any more.

And us?

He asked, abandoning all pride. She replied:

I’m not sure. You’d have to prove that you’re sorry and that you’re trustworthy.

He replied eagerly:

I can do that!

She left the conversation then without answering. Almost immediately, Ryan received a new Facebook notification:

Freddie Lees-Hill is on Facebook live.

And… there he was, livestreaming himself bellowing: ‘£2 doubles YES PLEASE!’ and, right beside him, there was Jenny, looking straight at the camera, smiling, waving. Freddie dodged out of frame; Jenny blew a kiss at the camera. ‘Say hi, Jen! Jen!’ Freddie cried, and she did. She waved. ‘Hi! Hi!’ and David realised that it was the first time he’d heard her voice or seen her move in three years, and the knowledge made him feel faint. He closed his eyes. Tears started. He heard Freddie laughing his hooting laugh. Then the stream stopped, and David was suddenly alone again, in his dim room; she’d actually been with Freddie throughout their whole unmasking-of-Ryan conversation, and hadn’t told him anything?

She remembered him from school. That meant that something about David interested her enough to keep her friend in the dark. She’d already thought more of him than she did of Freddie! And how brilliantly she’d handled it! He wouldn’t have to be Ryan ever again; he wouldn’t have to talk to Freddie ever again. Jenny had achieved, in less than an hour, more than David had in years.

She was even more perfect than he’d imagined.

Over the next year or so they kept in touch. On his birthday, she even sent him a photo of herself, which he immediately wrapped in a clean pillowcase and put under his mattress.

When he left Hazlewood, the first thing he did was get it properly framed, but he didn’t put it on the wall of the flat his parents had bought for him. They would notice when they came round – as they did, frequently, not to ‘check’ just to ‘say hello!’– and he wasn’t ready to share her with them.

It was only after his father’s death had propelled him back into hospital, and after his mother’s diagnosis had propelled him out again, that he put it up in his old bedroom, and spent long hours gazing at it, hoping desperately for her, praying that they would meet, properly, soon. That they would be together, for ever, at last.

She wanted that too. Of course she did. But, she reminded him that things were complicated, he just had to be patient, that’s all. Sometimes he almost fought back. Why? Why does Freddie take precedence over me? Why can’t your mother have people around the house? You can’t be that busy – too busy to even meet, when we’re only a mile apart? Then he’d hear the silence on her end of the phone, a frozen, sometimes tearful pause:

‘You think I’m… lying?’

‘No! No, of course—’

‘I don’t do that, David. You’re the one who does that.’

‘Not any more – I don’t any more.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if that’s true.’ And her voice was so hurt, distant, and sometimes she wouldn’t answer calls, pick up messages, and David hated hated hated himself for demanding too much, was joyfully relieved when she forgave him and they started speaking again.

And when she asked for small favours, he was more than happy to oblige her; it was the least he could do. It was only money, after all, and he had lots of money. And as for the last favour he’d done for her, well, it made him feel warm every time he thought of it.