Bloom. Nicola Skinner

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      IT’S NOT OFTEN you open a brand-new book to be told that it’s dangerous. But if you want the facts, and nothing but the facts, then this is a book with peril in its pages.

      Well, technically, there might be peril in its pages. No one’s been able to prove anything. But still, the risks are there. Which means you need to read this page carefully before skipping off to Chapter 1.

      No one is safe. Girls. Boys. Mums. Dads. Sisters. Brothers. Aunts. Uncles. Even those great-great-apparently-you’re-related-but-you-can’t-remember-how relatives you see once a year. Yep, even them.

      You’re all in fate’s firing line now.

      That’s because just holding this book and touching this paper has unfortunately left you, and everyone you know, potentially exposed to a substance that is, according to the scientists, ‘highly volatile, medically unregulated and impossible to cure’.

      Or, as a confused-looking nurse put it to me once: ‘We’ve never seen anything like this before, love.’

      So be prepared.

      Over the next few days you might experience some unusual sensations. You could be running a bath before bedtime and want to drink it, not sit in it.

      You might experience some unusual pains in some unusual places.

      And finally – really, it’s nothing to be alarmed about – you might develop some, ahem, growths about your body.

      But wait! Don’t fling the book away in horror! Come back! The chances of this happening to you too are super small. Roughly one in a million, or a billion. (Or one in a hundred. I’m not brilliant with decimals.) Honestly, it’s extremely unlikely anything will happen to you, and even if it does, there’s literally no point rushing off to the bathroom to scrub your hands.

      Because it’s not your hands you need to worry about.

      But look – try not to worry. Even if you are infected at least you won’t be the only one. It happened to us too. We all look a little weird here.

      Or, as Mum would say diplomatically, ‘Haven’t we grown, Sorrel?’

      And yes, that is my name. Mum has a thing about fresh herbs. It could have been worse, I suppose. She also loves parsley.