Maisie lopes back into the kitchen holding a box of blueberries in one hand and an over-stuffed rucksack in the other.

Too late for Becky to change her mind now, she holds onto her daughter tightly and silently prays for her safety.

‘Be asleep by midnight,’ she says. ‘You’ve got school. And you can call your dad if there are any problems. Or me. I’ll have my phone with me in Cannes. WhatsApp, text, a call, it will all work …’

‘Yes, yes,’ she says quickly, and turns to face Adam. ‘You guys are the best.’

She catches the intense concentration and joy in Adam’s eyes as he flips a pancake onto her plate: the pleasure of a job well done for the people he most loves. So she can’t ask him for everything she might want, and he might not do everything exactly like her, but she feels so lucky for what she has. Things might have spiralled into a row without him there, with Maisie not feeling listened to and Becky the baddie, the mother who fails to trust her daughter.

Adam is her compass. Her confirmation person, her Call in Case of Emergency man. The man her daughter calls Dad. Her best friend. Joint custodian of the great lie at the heart of her life.

Chapter 7

Hounslow

Mid-September 2003 to mid-March 2004

In the weeks after the party Becky can wake in the mornings and for a few moments feel as if she has come to consciousness in her normal, untouched life. But then she remembers the badness, and it fills her heart and mind to the brim. She overflows with it.

It becomes a struggle just to get out of bed.

At first, she gets away with some mornings at home, complaining of a virus and, later, the flu. She insists she doesn’t need anything for it but her parents press paracetamol, tea and damp flannels in her direction. Weekends come and go but her usual trips to the pool are dropped and she can no longer countenance the bright and bouncy happiness of Saturday morning television presenters. She chooses to watch soaps instead, passively allowing their stories and characters to slide past her thoughts and feelings.

She hides her body in baggy clothes. She avoids the mirror, as if it might talk to her. She just wants to sleep.

After a fortnight of this her mum declares this period of supposed ill health as having gone on ‘far too long’. Becky is sent to a doctor who diagnoses glandular fever. This buys her another four months of staying in bed, watching television and avoiding food, until her mum begins to mistrust this diagnosis – having come from a generation that does not trust an illness with undefined edges and blurred duration and no brand-name pharmaceutical pill to cure it.

She insists on tests for Becky: blood and urine.