JENNY DOWNHAM

I get a lot of letters, mostly from family members who have been affected by cancer rather than young people themselves. I reply to them all.

If I learnt anything at all about terminal illness in my research, it's that the experience is different for everyone. I do believe that life becomes concentrated when it's boundaried and that death is the biggest boundary of all.

As an actor I worked for seven years with a community theater company based in London. We used improvisation techniques to take stories to young people who wouldn't normally have access to them - in prisons, hospitals, young offender's units, youth clubs and housing estates.

When my second child was born, I gave up acting - two young children out on the road was too difficult to manage. I'd always written, but began to do so with real commitment now that it was my only creative outlet. I used all my acting techniques to do it. I still do.

I never plan a structure. I like surprises. I'm quite disciplined and sit at my desk every day and just write.

We make patterns, we share moments. Sometimes, I think I'm the only one to see it.

I can see inside planes!' he yells. 'Come and look!' It's difficult climbing in a mini dress...I haul myself up even though my arms ache. I want to see inside planes too. I want to watch the wind and catch birds in my fist.

I'm here, Tess. I'm right here, holding your hand. Adam's here, too, he's sitting on the other side of the bed. And Cal. Mum's on her way, she'll be just a minute. We all love you, Tessa. We're all right here with you.

Every few years we disappear, Zoey. All our cells are replaced by others. Not a single bit of me is the same as when I was last in this room.

Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.

I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things.

Moments. All gathering towards this one.

The last few weeks, it was as if someone had taken his life to pieces and let him see the way it worked.

It's a shame i can't be there myself - i like parties. Text me if you think of any good hymns!

I don't think words reach people. Maybe nothing does

I shrug him off. 'Can't you just go away?" There's a moment. It has a sound in it, as if something very small got broken.

It's really going to happen. I really won't ever go back to school. Not ever. I'll never be famous or leave anything worthwhile behind. I'll never go to college or have a job. I won't see my brother grow up. I won't travel, never earn money, never drive, never fall in love or leave home or get my own house. It's really, really true. A thought stabs up, growing from my toes and ripping through me, until it stifles everything else and becomes the only thing I'm thinking. It fills me up like a silent scream.

I want to die in my own way. It's my illness, my death, my choice. This is what saying yes means.

No, really. I free you.' I don't want to be free.

Every breath, every heartbeat, was one less until maybe things stopped hurting this much.

Death straps me to the hospital bed, claws its way onto my chest and sits there.I didn't know it would hurt this much. I didn't know that everything good that's ever happened in my life would be emptied out by it.

The light is heart-breaking.

Perhaps I'm dead. Perhaps this is all it will be. The living will carry on in their world – touching, walking. And I'll continue in this empty world, tapping soundlessly on the glass between us.

She'll understand what I already know - that death surrounds us all. And it tastes like metal between your teeth.

Humans are made from nuclear ash of dead stars