The thing is, he thinks, as he fills the kettle and jams bread in the toaster, that things never work out the way she says they will. She was going to stop drinking, get a job at the school (her friend Mel is a dinner lady) and they would have a better life. Harry’s paper round was just helping them along for a while, to get the ‘frills and trills’ until she ‘got on her feet’. The benefits weren’t enough to enjoy life with. They were only just enough for the basics – food and electricity and monthly repayments on the loans she had taken out. Harry has lost count of the number of times he has answered her mobile, obediently telling men with variously insistent voices, ‘Susan Carter isn’t here and this is a second-hand phone.’

‘Well, did you?’

‘No,’ he calls. ‘Just getting the tea and toast now.’

There is no milk and only a little margarine. He smears it thinly.

‘Get a bloody move on, then!’

Harry balances the tray on the edge of the sink and fumbles in his pocket for the small brown packet with the folded notes in it. He has worked for this money and he has earned it. He has got up every morning at 5am, eyes still sewn with sleep and a body protesting so vigorously for its bed that he has had to douse himself with cold water from the scum-encrusted sink in the bathroom. He adjusts the tray with his arm while he folds the envelope and slides it between the back of the sideboard and the wall, where it collides with one or two others hidden there. He takes a breath, aware he must find a better hiding place. But he doesn’t have time now.

Her bedroom is a tip and smells of cigarette smoke and alcohol. There are piles of clothes, scattered magazines and empty plates with food in various stages of decay. Harry steps over them. A mound stirs in a bed far too big for the room. There is barely enough space to stand.

‘About bloody time!’ His mother pulls herself into a sitting position, moaning. Her eyes are bloodshot and her hair is greasy. She wipes her face with the back of her hand and a smear of mucus glistens briefly before being wiped on the sheet. Harry puts down the tray on top of it. At least that way neither of them will have to look at it. She attacks the tea with gusto, slurping fangs of liquid onto her chin.

‘Are you going to wash up for me before you go to school?’ She sniffs and observes him with narrow eyes.