‘OK,’ says Becky. Going through the motions now. She is, he knows in his gut, waiting to be alone again so that she can do what she needs to do to remove herself. He wants to make her promise not to kill herself, but that moment has gone.

Janette opens the front door and lets Adam and Becky in. She didn’t go back to bed after Adam called her. She knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink.

‘Have you been drinking?’ she asks. She can smell the vodka.

‘No,’ says Becky. There is no life in her voice. ‘I’m going to go to bed.’

‘Let’s have a cup of tea first,’ says Adam. ‘I’m quite cold.’ Becky moves seamlessly towards the kitchen and the kettle. Janette looks at Adam: he sees how frightened she is, and she sees that same set of fears in him. They follow her.

Bill lumbers down the stairs in his dressing gown.

‘Bit early, isn’t it?’ he says to Adam. Adam shrugs.

‘Do you want tea?’ Janette asks him. ‘Becky’s making.’

‘No.’

‘Can I help?’ Adam asks Becky. She shakes her head. He sits down.

The kettle boils with a click.

‘It’s my baby,’ says Adam. ‘I’m the father. She’s been protecting me because she didn’t want me to feel like it was up to me to have to sort things out. We made a mistake. And I have to take responsibility for that.’

Becky turns. In her expression, her mother reads the final revealing of a secret.

‘You stupid fucking prick!’ shouts her father, at Adam. ‘You’ve ruined her life!’

‘No, I haven’t,’ says Adam, firmly. This skinny guy, talking like he’s made of iron: how can he be a teenager? ‘Becky’s going to have a great life. Becky’s brilliant. This is just something we’ve got to get through first.’

Bill takes two steps and punches Adam in the face, knocking him to his knees. Becky cries out and runs to intervene, Janette flies in, and for a moment the four of them are locked in a surreal, wild struggle, blood flowing from Adam’s nose and Janette wailing and Becky putting herself between her father and Adam, her father vibrating with rage.

‘Coward!’ shouts Bill. ‘You stitched her up and you let her hang!’

‘I know,’ says Adam, bleeding down his T-shirt. ‘I’ll try to be better.’

Afterwards they sit in her bedroom, the two of them, two plugs of toilet paper up his nostrils to stem the bleeding.

‘This way you can’t kill yourself,’ he tells her. ‘I know you’re my friend and you care about me, at least on some level. And if you kill yourself then I’ll always be the cause of it. For your family and my family and everyone we know. So you won’t do it.’