I’m so shocked I stagger as I leave.

This giddiness passes, but I don’t trust myself, have to lean against a wall as people hurry by, a little pocket of stillness in a world rushing forwards forever.

I cover my eyes and realise I should have stayed inside.

The doctor wanted me to.

The nurse wanted me to.

She even offered me tea, biscuits, the chance to use her mobile to call friends and relatives and share this thing I’ve been told, that I’ll be dead in a matter of weeks…

Stay, she said.

Calm down, she said.

Have a seat, she said.

Have a chat, she said.

Tell us what’s in your head…

But as kind as she was, as motherly as she was, there are things words can’t express, and all I can think is that I should be thinking of how my mother and father will cope, how they’ll survive watching me fade before their eyes, a baby again, a human in reverse.

But it’s no good, I can’t even think of their pain, or mine, or the nothing I’m soon to become.

Somehow, bizarrely, after not giving him a moment’s thought since he died when I was six, there’s only one thing I can think of, and that’s the mouse I loved twelve long years ago.

*****

I’d always wanted a pet. Nothing fancy like a dog or a cat. Just a frog or a bird or a goldfish would have shut me up.

But my mum said pets spread germs, and what my mum said in those days was law.

She was a mess back then, high on the drugs they gave her when my brother went to live in the hospital, and if I ever tried to argue, she would always cry, and get my dad to join in on her side.

“Look,” he’d yell. “You’ve made your mother cry again. Happy now? Are you happy now?”

So I asked for a pet and she said no and he glared at me over The Times.

That would have been the end of it, but I found this mouse in the gutter soon after.

It didn’t seem to mind me finding it.

It didn’t try to run away.

It didn’t even try to scratch me.

It just sat timid in my palm and let me stroke its soft plasticine nose and its coarse Brillo ears.

I called him Martin Mouse and decided he would be my secret pet.

*****

Even as young as six I knew secrets were the things you kept from those who loved you, and I kept the secret of Martin in my sandwich box.

He seemed to like it in there.

He never scratched at the sides or tried to jump out when I took the lid off.

He was a happy little mouse, seemingly relieved to be out of the gutter and living in safely sheltered plastic.

And he had manners, too. He never once nibbled my sandwiches. He didn’t even go to the toilet in there. He was the best pet a boy could hope for.

Other than the smell.

The smell was a real problem. I never noticed at first. But after a couple of weeks anyone who spoke to me seemed to sniff a lot. And they always seemed eager to get away.

Mum kept sending me up for baths and after ten or so days she took me to the doctor. She seemed to be scared they’d keep me there, the way they were keeping my brother, but it didn’t happen. As I never took my sandwich box to the surgery, the doctor never found anything wrong, and always looked at my mum in a way that made my mum mad.

I didn’t mind the smell myself. By then, Martin was my one true friend. I talked to him about everything that was going on in my life; kindly Miss Ryde, who I had a crush on at school, the fact my parents made so many stupid rules and regulations, the fact I wasn’t allowed to stay up and watch Hammer House of Horrors on a Saturday night, or play outside with my friends anymore.

I talked to him about my brother as well.

I missed my brother.

And I missed the way mum and dad had been before my brother went away to live with the doctors, the way they had always laughed and joked so much.

They didn’t do that anymore.

Didn’t do that at all.

And, as the smell got worse, so did my mum.

She took me to the doctor three times without him finding a thing.

Far from satisfied, she kept me home from school and tucked me up in bed and prodded here, prodded there, became more and more fraught as the smell increased. 

I didn’t get to see Martin much through all of this because she was watching me all the time, but one afternoon, when I thought the coast was clear, I pulled the lunchbox from under the bed.

“Come on,” I said, opening the Tupperware container. “Out you come.”

I pushed Martin into the palm of my hand.

Held him up to the light.

Prodded him gently.

“How are you today?” I asked. “How’s my little pet?”

I stroked his Brillo ears and gave his plasticine nose a swift soppy kiss.

He didn’t seem to notice, so I prodded him in the side.

“Go on,” I said. “Squeak.”

I was so caught up in Martin, I was oblivious to the fact my mother was standing in the doorway, a hand clapped over her mouth, until she screamed:

“A mouse! He’s got a mouse!”

I pushed Martin under the covers, but it was too late.

My dad came storming up the stairs, heavy work-boots thudding bare wooden risers.

“What’s going on?” He yelled. “What’s he playing at now?”

“A mouse… A mouse…” The words were muffled because my mother had her hands clapped across her mouth. “A mouse…”

“Right,” Dad said, and stormed across the bedroom. “We’ll soon sort that out.”

He whipped the covers off the bed and they all met Martin, who was crouched on my stomach, dead scared, dead quiet, dead still.

“Dead,” my mother groaned, and turned away. “A dead mouse.”

My father picked him up by the tail.

He hung stiff and awkward in the air.

My mother screamed and ran sobbing from the room.

My dad glared at me.

It was a look of disgust and despair that even I, at the age of six, flinched from.

“It’s dead,” he said angrily. “Don’t you see?”

I shrugged.

I didn’t know what dead was.

They’d never told me.

“It’s got to be thrown away,” he roared. “It’s got mould on.”

He turned and stomped off with Martin still dangling from his hand.

I ran after him, but I was too small and too slow.

I was only just entering the bathroom when the toilet flushed.

By the time I was close enough to do anything, Dad was already washing his hands.

He gave me another foul look, then went off to find Mum.

When he’d calmed her down, he tanned my backside for scaring her and playing with dead things.

I couldn’t sit for a week and cried a hell of a lot.

And I never asked for a pet again.

Not even a live one.

*****

They never did tell me what death was.

I worked it out for myself in the end, and it finally dawned on me that my brother hadn’t gone to live in the hospital after the car hit him.

I never really thought about it much, though.

I never really thought about anything, really.

Even when the doctor said my headaches were being caused by a tumour that would kill me within a month, maybe two, I didn’t stop to think about death, what it does, the places it takes you. 

It’s hard to break a habit.

Hard to face facts.

Suck up truth.

That’s probably why I’m standing outside the hospital right now with my hands across my eyes, thinking about a mouse when I should be thinking about me, or my parents, or something, something, who knows what.

It’s insane, so I try to stop, try to think about Mum, Dad, Mum and Dad, how I’m going to tell them, how they’re going to react, but all I can do is remember that stupid mouse, the way they reacted to that poor stupid mouse.

Because I remember Mum turning and running from the room.

And I remember Dad holding it up and carrying it towards the pan.

And I picture myself standing before them, small and weak and sick, holding death up once more and saying…

Look, this is the pet you gave me…

The only thing you ever let me love…

The only thing I ever got to own…

And now I’m bringing it home.