“‘So what?’ I say.

“‘We’ve got to move on,’ she says – she’s always saying that. ‘What’s happened has happened. We’ve got to put it behind us. No use crying over spilt milk.’

“She really did say that once, honest. I think of it all the time, the spilt milk on the pavement outside the shop. I never saw it, but I think of it and I wish I didn’t. I so want to tell her everything just like I’ve told you, but I can’t, I just can’t. And I don’t think I ever will.”

Becky cried herself to sleep soon afterwards, and her mother and Craig found her still sleeping there on the sofa when they came back, Alfie and Brighteyes lolling beside her, their heads on her lap.

Craig wasn’t just angry, he was apoplectic. “If you want to sleep with them,” he was yelling right in her face, “then you know what you can do, you can ruddy well go and sleep in the kennels. But you’re not going to do it in my house, you get me?”

Her mother tried her best to intervene on Becky’s behalf, but that only made things worse. “There you go again,” he was yelling at her mother now. “Always taking her side, letting her do what she likes. That’s why she’s like she is, can’t you see? Her dad may have let her run wild and do what she liked. But this is my house and I make the rules here. She knows the rules. No dogs in the house. I’ve told her often enough, haven’t I? And what does she do? She goes and sneaks them in when our backs are turned. And I wouldn’t mind betting this isn’t the first time either. If she wants to live here, she does what I say, simple as that. Are you hearing me, Becky?”

Becky looked him right in the eye. Anger gave her the courage she needed to answer him back. “I don’t want to live here,” she shouted at him, “I never did. I hate this house, and I hate you. And if you want me to sleep in the kennels with the dogs, that’s fine. I’ll sleep in the kennels. I’m not bothered. I don’t mind. See if I care.” And without another word she slammed out of the house, Alfie and Brighteyes following her across the yard.

A little later her mother came out and tried to persuade her to come back inside the house, to patch things up, and say sorry to Craig. But Becky wouldn’t do it.

“I didn’t think so,” said her mother sadly, “which is why I’ve brought you out your duvet and a pillow.”

So Becky spent that night curled up with the dogs at the back of their kennel, covered in her duvet and sharing a pillow with Brighteyes. And whenever Becky woke, which was often, he’d be there, awake and looking straight back at her. It was Brighteyes who helped her through the night, soothed her anger, and kept her warm.