Dayal was rattling the railing of his cot. When he spotted her in the doorway his frown disappeared and a smile crept from behind the dummy clenched between his teeth. He would need a bed of his own soon. Another thing she couldn’t afford.

‘Good morning, handsome,’ she said and lifted him from the cot.

He was getting so heavy. The baby fat was slowly shedding as he morphed into a toddler. He would be two in January. She couldn’t bear to think of the money she would need to find to buy his presents. She hadn’t even saved enough for Christmas, and with it being a month away, she had no idea what she would do. But she would figure something out. She had to.

Neena sat down on the rocking chair and heaved him into position on her lap. She eyed the room through her sleepy haze and thought she saw new spots of damp on the wall by the window.

‘You’re such a big boy.’

He mumbled around the dummy. She tried to remove it from between his lips. He bit down.

‘How am I supposed to hear what you’re saying with the dummy in your mouth?’

She tried again, and this time he let her take it from him. She wiped the drool from the dummy on her top.

‘You going away, Mummy?’

Her chest ached whenever he asked her that. He was too young to understand that it was up to her to support them both, and she needed to work to pay for the heating, the water, the food, and the dummies he treasured and chewed to bits. Every time she left him in the gym crèche to teach a yoga class, guilt stabbed between her ribs. He was too young to be separated from her. She was missing the chance to watch him grow up, apart from the odd break between classes and the drive to different gyms within a thirty-mile radius of their home. By the evening, when her last class was complete, he would fall asleep in his car seat and she would carry him up to bed. She would spend the rest of the evening in silence, because she had pawned the TV for cash.

‘I only have three classes today,’ she lied. ‘And then we can do whatever you want.’

She only had two classes. The lie of the third gave her time to meet with Richard.

‘Wanna go park!’

She sighed with relief. Something that wouldn’t cost her.

‘We’ll go to the park this afternoon, before my last class.’

She jolted as a train rattled past the window of the apartment and shook the room. The chair rocked with the motion. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

‘Train! Train!’