Sadie felt like somebody who was dying. Her life flashed in front of her. She thought of her cousin, Josh, and all the problems he had coped with, always in the shadow of her dramas. She knew they thought she didn’t care two hoots about him and her behaviour towards him had probably confirmed that, but he was a good lad. She lay there when rationality returned periodically to her and tried to imagine life through his eyes. She took a deep breath and willed his voice into existence; for the first time ever she considered what hell Josh had been faced with. The pictures began to come to her and Josh’s voice began its story on her command. * “It began without me really noticing it. Anxious feelings that something awful would happen to my mum. I found tapping five times when I was fearful took the tightening in my chest away. Trouble is, I then had to do it more, especially when I was about to go to bed. Not once but fifteen times and then the next night, just to be sure, just a little bit more.
