‘Hey, Ash,’ he says, standing when he sees me walking towards him.

‘You got any paracetamol, Nish?’

He grabs a pack from the shelf behind him and puts it on the counter between us. ‘£1.99.’

‘This too, please,’ I say, chucking a pack of chewing gum on the counter.

‘£2.58.’

I slip my hand into the pocket of my leather jacket for my purse and hand him a tenner.

‘Happy New Year,’ I say when he hands me the change.

‘Yeah.’ He nods as though he’s forgotten what night it is. ‘Happy New Year, Ash.’

I take my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans as I turn to leave, checking the time.

11:58.

Two minutes isn’t enough time to make it home, even if I run.

Looks like I’ll be ringing in the New Year by myself.

Brilliant.

I open the chewing gum as I’m heading out the door, popping one into my open mouth. I miss, though, chucking it at my eye, and as it bounces off, I trip over the sign for the National Lottery outside. Thankfully, a girl is passing and she grabs my arm before I face plant the pavement. I turn to curse the sign.

Could you be a winner tonight? it says.

Clearly not.

‘You’re Ashana, right?’ the girl asks when I’m a safe enough distance away from the sign.

‘Yeah,’ I say before I try again with the chewing gum, succeeding this time.

‘Ashana Persaud?’

‘Yeah.’ I stop chewing the gum for a second. ‘Who are you?’

At first glance, she looks about Rosh’s age – thirteen, maybe fourteen. She’s the same height with that same softness around her face that makes me wonder if she rereads His Dark Materials every Christmas and loves chemistry because it’s the closest thing she’s seen to magic. The massive black teddy-bear coat she’s wearing doesn’t help, swamping her, making her legs look like they might snap under the weight of it.

We stare at one another in the doorway of the mini-mart. Now I look at her – really look at her – I realise that she’s older than I thought. She doesn’t have the same fidgety energy Rosh has and her hair is tamer, a sharp white-blonde bob that stops just above her jaw, the colour of printer paper. She smiles and I see that her eyes are the same colour as Poppy’s but again with none of the warmth, like someone’s coloured them in with a blue felt-tip that’s almost run out.

Cold, that’s what I feel looking at her, despite her pink cheeks and smile.

She leaves me cold.

‘I’m Dev.’ She persists with a sweet smile that is doing nothing to convince me that she actually is sweet.