They call my name. They tell me that there’s a call for me. Some girl, they say. No one else cares that I have a call. They don’t even know that I exist. That’s fine – because one person does know. And he’s the most important person in the world to me. He is the reason that I’m here. No. I am the reason that I am here. I am here because I messed up one time too many.

I killed a man, my father’s friend. I never imagined that it would go this far. All I wanted was a bit of fun. My friend Alan and me, we wanted to borrow my dad’s car. He said no, so Alan took a car from the car park. It turned out that it was a car belonging to Dad’s friend. The two of them chased us – the cars crashed. I escaped. Ben didn’t. Dad didn’t.

I didn’t go and see him. I felt too guilty. But I had to know how he was – so I sneaked into the hospital, and I saw him through a window. I would have got out, as well, if the nurse hadn’t seen me. She told me off. I deserved it. She asked how I dared show my face. I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had to know that Dad was okay.

It was Griffin and that one who killed her husband; they were the ones that made me see him. They said Dad felt guilty. They forced me to see him. And when I did, I saw his leg. The stump where the leg had been cut off. I was scared – I had made that happen. Dad and I argued. I stormed out when his girlfriend arrived. I think I embarrassed her, but I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was leave. I felt sick, sick with guilt.

But I wasn’t able to leave. Griffin caught me. He made the nurse, the one who was in the papers for killing her husband, the one they called “the angel of death”, speak to me. I shouted at her. What did I say? I don’t know. I just knew I had to leave. Where did I go? I don’t know. I just walked. I didn’t go home. I couldn’t go home. And I went back to Dad. I told him I was sorry. I told him how I felt.

And he talked about Mum. How she would be so angry with us if she were here. And I knew what I had to do. So I promised I would go to the police. He was proud of me. How could anyone be proud of me? And I promised that I would visit him soon. But I can’t, because they put me in here. A young offenders’ institute. Trying to make me feel guilty – as if anything they do can make me feel worse.

But it can, and when they hand me the phone, and I warily say “Hello”, I know how they can make me feel worse.

Because the voice on the other end is Dad’s girlfriend. She calls herself Diane, and she sounds as though she has been crying. And before she tells me, I know what has happened.

“No. No. No.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and cries. Why should she be crying? She has nothing to cry for. I have lost everything. Everything in my world. I have no one. She has everyone except Dad. She has friends and family, a job, probably a nice house and everything. I tell her this. She cries some more, and I can’t understand what she is saying because I am crying too.

And then someone else takes the phone. The one who killed her husband. How can she be crying over death? She probably killed my father. I tell her this. She cries too.

And they take the phone from me, and force me into my room. They tell me that they’re sorry. I tell them that they don’t know what they’re talking about. They didn’t know Dad. They didn’t know that he meant everything to me since Mum died. We meant everything to each other. And now there is only me.

My cruel words come back to me.

I’ll leave you to play doctors and nurses with your girlfriend.

I did leave him. I left him and I can never go back to him.