The following weekend, the Helders family are supposed to go to a birthday party somewhere near Leeds. Though Mrs Helders insists that Alex should come along with them, ignoring the fact that he obviously isn’t part of the invitation, Alex politely declines. It isn’t hard for Miles to see why the idea would make him uncomfortable; when you’ve lost something as significant as your parents, the last thing you would want to do is surround yourself by someone else’s entire family. You don’t want to be reminded of what you don’t have.
Miles’s Mum tells Miles to invite Alex over as soon as she hears.
“That poor boy can’t spend the whole weekend on his own,” she announces at the dinner table, and even Miles’s Dad agrees, “loneliness can trigger awful things in people who’ve lost someone they lo
