Jem handed her dad a mug of tea and settled on the carpet by his chair, her arm tucked around his leg and her cheek pressed against his thigh. She closed her eyes as his fingers stroked through her hair. She had never been a lap child, so sure of her place that she could curl up on an adult’s knee whenever she needed comfort. The floor seemed safer somehow, close but not close enough to be considered presumptuous, and despite her dad’s best efforts to reassure her that this family—her new family—was forever, she had never broken free of all her old habits.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked. He always bought the early edition of the Manchester Evening News, and one glance at its headline had prompted him to phone her. She couldn’t count the number of her jobs that had made the front page. Her mum had kept a scrapbook for a while, until things had started to get ridiculous.

“Not really,” she said. She knew the lad’s name now and what he had looked like before someone assaulted him and left him to die. She raised her head so she could see her dad, and he smiled down at her, crinkling more lines into his forehead and dimpling his cheeks. He touched the skin beneath her eyes, his fingertips rough with calluses. He’d been digging in the garden when she arrived, and he still smelled like damp soil and lavender.

“You look tired, Jem.”

“I am. I didn’t sleep much.”

“Me neither. Our latest arrival saw to that.”

“How old?” she asked. The foster child was with Jem’s mum at a doctor’s appointment, so she hadn’t met him yet.

“Eight months. Emergency domestic violence placement. He came to us in the wee hours with a swollen cheek and a busted lip.”

“Poor little mite.” She took her dad’s hand and squeezed it. “He’ll settle once you’ve worked your magic.”

He chuckled. “Wasn’t magic with you, love. We spiked your Horlicks with brandy.”

“You never did!”

His mug wobbled as he laughed, and he put it down for fear of spilling his tea. “No, but we were very tempted, especially when you were up all night coughing your socks off.”

“Fair point,” she conceded. “Might’ve worked better than my inhalers.” Stretching her legs out, she leaned back on the chair, trying to alleviate a stubborn niggle across the base of her spine. She had woken stiff and miserable after three hours of broken sleep, and the paracetamol Ferg had propped by the kettle had barely taken the edge off.

“Here.”