“This is all my fault.”

That was the first thing I heard when I came round. I was lying in a hospital bed, Mum sitting by my side, holding my hand. She was blaming herself for the mess I was in.

My eyelids were heavy. I was woozy from whatever drugs the hospital had given me. A saline drip stood beside my bed, a needle through my arm. The stab wound to my stomach had been stitched together. There was a dull ache there, but it was already healing of its own accord. My broken arm was in a cast, and I could feel the splintered bones knitting together, the flesh remoulding.

A day, maybe two, and I’d be as good as new.

Mum had been called when I’d been admitted to Wycombe General Hospital. The soldiers had driven me straight there, figuring it was my best shot at survival. After that, they’d driven off to another assignment. I’d been unconscious for all of it. Section 13 had done what they do to keep the police out of it. The usual cover-up. I was surprised they weren’t at the hospital, but they were dealing with other things, and I was a low priority.

Mum looked worn out. Her sunny disposition had given way to tiredness. She wasn’t angry with me. She was just sad and blaming herself.

“Mum, don’t say that. Please. It isn’t your fault,” I mumbled through thick lips and a dry mouth.

I was still trying to orientate myself, work out where I was, and remember how I’d got here. The previous day’s events came back to me bit by bit through the muggy haze.

Mum gripped my hand tighter, shook her head.

“It is all my fault, Ethan. This is all because I didn’t tell you the truth. I was keeping things from you and you became angry because of it. Rebellious. Now you’re running around getting into all this trouble and telling lies and getting stabbed and I know, I know it’s all my fault.”

“Mum, this isn’t your fault,” I repeated. “And I’ve not been angry…”

“Oh, you have, Ethan. You’ve kept it in check, but it’s always been lurking there, under the surface. Ever since you hit that Maxwell kid, and what happened after that.”

This was all news to me. I’d always thought that whatever anger issues I’d got were kept under wraps for the most part.

I waved at a nearby plastic cup of water. Mum held it to my mouth as I took a few sips. I propped myself up on the hospital bed, wincing. Through the chemical brain fog, I recalled the events of yesterday. The cursed one. The demon. Scooby getting shot by Section 13.

That last bit still annoyed me.

“You’ve always been such a good boy, Ethan,” my mum said. “I know it’s been hard for you in lots of ways, but you always kept yourself in check. I don’t understand how you can be getting into all this trouble. Is it something to do with drugs, Ethan? Are you in trouble with some drug dealers or something? That Victoria...” once again, expletives deleted “... has she got something to do with this?”

“Mum, I promise you, this has got nothing to do with drugs or gangsters or whatever.”

Mum looked doubtful. I needed to tell her something to explain how I’d ended up in a hospital in High Wycombe, but I couldn’t tell her the whole truth.

“It’s not what you think at all. I was trying to help someone who was in danger, a friend. I wasn’t supposed to get hurt. And you need to let the Victoria Pryce thing go. It isn’t what you think. Victoria is alright, she’s been helping too.”

Mum’s eyes narrowed, but she changed tack.

“It’s the internet, isn’t it?” Mum said, her voice laced with suspicion, “Nothing good ever came from it.”

I couldn’t help smiling. Classic Mum. If she couldn’t work out what was wrong with the world, it was doubtless something to do with teenagers going on the internet.

“No, Mum, it isn’t anything to do with the internet, I promise.”

“Okay, well, it doesn’t matter,” Mum sniffed. “I still need to tell you the truth.”

“What about?”

“About your father. As much as I know. Maybe if I hadn’t been keeping the truth from you all these years, this wouldn’t be happening. I think you’ve known it all along, deep down.”

“Mum, I don’t know what you’re going on about.”

Mum put her head in her hands. Came to a decision.

“Ethan, I never knew your real father.”

“What?”

“Or your real mother,” Mum concluded, “Ethan…”

There aren’t any good moments for your mum to tell you, in a fit of miserable self-recrimination, that you are in fact adopted.

I’m fairly sure there are better times, though, than when you are lying in a hospital bed, still fuzzy from the drugs, recovering from a knife wound inflicted by a demon who is preparing to bring an army from another dimension down on the world.

Mum’s timing had always been pretty lousy.

“You adopted me? What? When?”

“When you were a little less than two years old, Ethan.”

I was dumbstruck.

I’d had no idea I wasn’t Sally’s biological son.

I mean, she was my mum. How was I...? What could I...? And the Dad I’d always thought was my dad, Sally’s ex, wasn’t my dad at all. I’d been angry with someone who wasn’t my actual father for abandoning me. I’d been angry with Mum for not telling me about my dad when she knew nothing about him at all.

“So this is all my fault,” Mum mumbled. “I’ve been keeping this secret from you since you were two years old. Since me and the ex, since we adopted you. He left a year later, but I loved you so much by then, Ethan. I couldn’t... the older you got, the harder it got to tell you. And now this whole mess.”

It was too much for me to process. I decided there was only one thing that mattered. Mum was miserable enough as it was, and she didn’t need any more grief.

I set my chin to stubborn.

“Mum, I love you, and you are my mum. It doesn’t matter if I’m adopted. None of what happened is your fault in the slightest, and it’s got nothing to do with the fact you didn’t tell me this before. It doesn’t make any difference. I love you.”

Mum burst into tears and ran out of the room.

After she’d calmed down, she came back. She sat with me for a bit, didn’t ask me anything about what had happened or why I was in High Wycombe. We talked about everything else but that, in fact. Latest Netflix shows, a big sale she’d had at the shop. How pleased Joe was with the way I was working. The Morris Minor I was fixing up at the garage. She knew stuff was up with Jess and Dee, but she didn’t pry into it. It was all nice, normal, everyday stuff.

Exactly what I needed at that moment.

Things only got awkward again when Victoria Pryce walked into the room.