A powerful, timely and incredibly moving memoir in the bestselling tradition of Blake Morrison, Joan Didion and Ruth Picardie.

'Surely the bravest, most moving book you will read this year' Daily Express

When Cathy was seventeen, her brother Matty was her best friend. A year younger and much taller, he was clever, funny and outgoing. But one night in the summer of 1990, Matty was knocked down by a car and never walked or spoke again. Eight years later, he died.

This is a true story of a happy family ambushed by loss, the unknown place between life and death and how to find love and joy in the world even when you know it will never be the same again.

'Profoundly moving . . . beautiful and uplifting'
Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm

'Beautifully written . . . offers a message of enormous hope'
Sunday Times

'This is a book you would want to re-read during a tough time to make you feel less alone'
Observer

[Lozenge: Contains a new afterword by the author]

Profoundly moving . . . It is a great achievement to transform such a terrible story - one of a kind with which, as a neurosurgeon, I am painfully familiar - into something rather beautiful and uplifting . . .This book should be read by everybody who has either personal or professional experience of severe head injury and, indeed, by anybody who is concerned by the way our society has such difficulty in accepting that meaningful life is about more than just a beating heart.