Brookie’s eyes were smarting with tiredness and the tears he was holding back. His dad looked at the phone then back to him, back to the phone again, for what seemed a very long time, saying nothing, shaking his head.

‘All right, son, this is what’s going to happen. I’m keeping this.’ He held up the phone. ‘If there are any messages I’ll answer them, pretending I’m you. Any calls, I’ll let alone.’

‘He doesn’t, he only texts.’

‘I’m going to find out who he is and get to him.’

‘No! You can’t do that, he said if I told anybody, he said –’

‘Whatever he said you can forget it. I’m sorting this now. If he’s waiting for you anywhere, you dodge him. No going in the van, no lifts home, nothing. Got that?’

‘But he . . .’

Dad reached over and circled Brookie’s skinny wrist with his finger and thumb. ‘He won’t. You forget all about him, you get on with your schoolwork and stay near the others. No wandering out by yourself, understand me? Because he’s a bad ‘un, and you’re eleven and you’re not safe to be out on your own. But from now on, I handle this, OK? Now get to bed.’

When he was at the door, his dad said, ‘What was all that stuff about your bed?’

‘It’s . . .’

‘Never mind, get up there, I’ll look at it tomorrow. Scoot.’

All the way up the stairs and along the landing, Brookie was in a flat panic, and as he stepped over Alfie, lay down and pulled up the covers, automatically moving away from the springs. But then his panic thinned and floated away as he closed his eyes and did not trouble him in his sleep. In the morning, he woke and remembered that the phone wasn’t his any more, his dad was sorting it. He felt better.

Twenty-Eight

‘This is Sister Odewe on Fleming Ward, Bevham General Hospital, for Dr Deerbon. Please will you ring me back or come in, Doctor, regarding Lionel Brown? Thank you.’

The message had come in at six; it was now twenty past seven and Cat already had five calls listed. It had snowed, thawed a little, frozen again, making roads and pavements lethal, so that A&E was packed with fractures, pneumonia, hypothermia cases and the various victims of RTAs.

‘Felix, there’s a text saying choir practices are cancelled today but I still want to set off early for school because of the roads. Don’t pour the milk onto your cereal from three feet up, it splashes everywhere.’

Felix grinned. ‘Sam’s still asleep, did you know that?’

‘Ta-dah! No, Sam isn’t,’ his brother said, leaping into the kitchen. ‘Bet you haven’t left any of that.’

‘New box in the cupboard.’ Cat waved her arm vaguely, looking down at another message about an elderly patient.