Her absence has stopped feeling like an adventure, the adventure of a boy alone in his house. To begin with the kingdom is all his, he has biscuits to open, his mother’s shoes to try on, Coty talcum powder to dust down his trousers. The time passes, and he looks through the window and sees the day is growing dark. He begins to wonder … when will she be back? And the boy goes to the door and looks out into the empty street in the empty night, standing so long that his bones creak and grind as he tries to conjure her up from the dark.

The boy’s question is: who’s going to look after me?

‘Enid?’ I say sharply.

Silence.

I don’t know what I’m expecting. I’m not expecting her to reply, that’s for sure, and if she did, I’d know I had finally lost my mind. But I’d like something, some sign from her to let me know she’s okay and that she’s thinking about me; that I haven’t been left on my own.

‘I wondered if you were here, that’s all,’ I conclude apologetically. She wouldn’t like me hectoring her.

The phone rings – ring ring ring – making me jump, and I hurry over and stare at it as if I’ve never seen it before, this black rectangle with the blue glow and all the buttons, most of which we don’t use. And the noise is like a crying, crying, crying baby, demanding attention, and I’m scared to answer, because when I answer, it won’t be her. But if I don’t answer it and it stops ringing, I can pretend it was; that she rang, rang, rang, rang, rang me up with advice.

I pick it up. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s me!’

It’s not Enid. ‘Hello, Dinah.’

‘Listen! I’m managing the stall for Fern and its crazy busy here. Kim? I can’t hear you! Can you hear me?’

‘I can hear you,’ I shout back.

‘You have to come and help me, because I’m on my own!’

It sounds like: You hef to komm and hilp me!

‘I’m on my own, too,’ I tell her.

She sounds exasperated. ‘Of course! I know that! Can you come?’ Kenn you komm?

‘I’m on my way!’ I put the phone back carefully in its cradle and the silence hums around me.

Tears of gratitude burn my eyes. ‘Thank you, Enid,’ I whisper.

Sure enough, when I get there Fern’s little stall in the alley is surrounded by people and I have to battle my way through them to reach her. Dinah’s arguing with a woman who’s trying to buy her purple jacket. They’re pulling the jacket by the sleeves.

The woman’s shouting crossly, ‘It was on the table!’

Dinah’s shouting back, ‘But it’s not for sale!’