My breathing is steady. Calm. My emotions are under control, swallowed back down and imprisoned once more. I now know they'd always been there, I had only denied their presence and forbidden their manifestation. My mother was meant to be number six, but that number hangs over me now, a Damocles sword desperate to drop.

I look at my mother and see she is now as she has always been. Dead. Perhaps giving life to me had taken it from her. Well, if that is so, I don't want it.

Six is my favourite number. It always has been. A perfect number. My mother has actually done me a service in making her death accidental. She has given me the only gift worth anything, and it is the most precious.

She has given me Six.

I turn and, as I fall backwards, I thank her.

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