The front door opened, and Dean appeared carrying a holdall. The man slipped his arm around Dean’s shoulders, and they walked together down the path. When they reached the car, the man took the holdall and put it in the boot and Dean got in the passenger side. Lou swallowed down her instinct to call out. Dean seemed happy enough with this man, happier than he would be at seeing her.

The car drove away, and Lou experienced a strange, unsettling sensation deep in her stomach. This man was clearly one of Dean’s sport coaches giving him a lift to training. Dean had always been close to his coaches. But there was something about this man that seemed more familiar than any of the coaches she could remember meeting. Lou gave herself a mental slap. After the events of the last few days, she could probably convince herself that the postman delivering mail further up the road was actually Prince Charles.

Emerging from behind the hedge, Lou leant against the fence outside her house. She rolled a stone across the pavement under the sole of her trainer. With nobody home, there was no rush to go inside. She’d only get cross if she saw the mess in the kitchen again.

A strange hissing sound made her look up. In a garden further along the road, a giant yellow and red inflatable began to take shape, rising above the fence as a generator filled it with compressed air. Within minutes, a giant Homer Simpson bobbed on his tether.

Lou half-smiled. She couldn’t see any character from The Simpsons without being reminded of Stephen. As a kid, he could watch that programme for hours. He’d even let her watch it with him as long as she was quiet. One Christmas, he’d squirreled away enough pocket money to buy a decoration of Homer Simpson, chugging on a festive can of beer. When he’d hung it on the tree, their dad had joked, asking whether it was supposed to be him as he took a swig from his own beer. Dad had ruffled Stephen’s hair, making him smile. Stephen had always smiled when he was around their dad; when Dad cheered him on at junior football, when they were planning one of their all-day fishing trips to the canal.

Lou rolled the stone beneath her trainer again. At least Stephen had those memories. For her, any happy memories of their father were confined exclusively to playing games when she was very small. As she had grown, so her father’s interest in her had waned. When Stephen talked about football, their dad pounced on the conversation. If she talked about school or asked for help with homework, his eyes glazed over and he told her to ask her mum. ‘It’s only because you’re a girl,’ Mum had tried to explain when she helped Lou with her long division. ‘Dads always spend more time with their boys.’

Lou’s last memory of her dad was the morning when he’d left for work with his Tupperware box of ham sandwiches, made by Mum, just like he always did. But that night, his Ford Escort didn’t pull up on the grass verge outside the house and the Tupperware box didn’t appear on the draining board. It was a few weeks later that Lou spotted a familiar shape in the kitchen bin. She fished it out and showed it to Stephen, asking if he wanted it. He snatched it, threw it to the floor and stamped on it, smashing Homer Simpson and his beer can into tiny pieces. His reaction had been the sign of things to come.