Well done Imogen, I mutter, sourly and probably not silently enough. Dad hears only what he wants to, but he is tuned into any and all expressions of bitterness. It’s his factory setting.

‘Love! How are you, sweetheart?’ She loves me so hard, she loves me from so far away.

‘Mum, I’ve just got a job, I spoke to the editor this morning. I’m going to be a writer! A staff writer!’ I can’t get enough of those words, the weight of them, the rhythm of them. Solid sounding, after all of that fear and floating. ‘In fact, they’re using the name I suggested.’

‘Oh, Im, that’s great news! I’m so proud of you. And you’ll be working on a magazine, a proper job at last. Good girl! We’ve been worrying, you know. Are they paying you well? Do they pay you extra for coming up with the name? You’ll have a pension!’

No, no and no.

‘Um…for the first few months I’m on a contract, it’s sort of a start-up, it’s connected to the magazine. I thought I explained it at Christmas, don’t you remember?’ Panic makes me exasperated, cruel. ‘It’s early days, but the editor really likes me. I met her doing work experience.’ Also, Harri is a big fan of my sex blog. Still, as long as Mum remains resistant to online banking, I think it’s fine to let the rest of the internet remain a mystery. ‘So, I think they want me to start in about a week. It’s good, isn’t it?’

A pause. ‘You can always come home, love, if it doesn’t work out.’

Home, where it’s perennially cold, even though the plastic logs are lit up in the gas fire grate on a July day. Home, sleeping in a single bed mounted on castors, where you can’t masturbate yourself back to sleep without bumping and squeaking and being forced to explain over breakfast why you were making so much noise in the night. Home, where the sweet, bright, fake air freshener smells curdle with the smells they are trying to mask—the cigarette smoke, the drink, the damp, the litany of issues that we’ve always been a little too poor to fix. Home, where I dare not go, where love is limited, and no one lives out loud.

‘I saw Su, you know, Jen’s mum, the other day, they’re delighted that she’s home. She’s thinking about teacher training, did she tell you?’

‘Yeah, she said she might be able to start early, in the spring term.’ Technically Jen said ‘If I have to wait until September I will kill. I need to be out of the house.’

‘You’d both be together, if you did come home. You girls have always done things together.’

‘Mmmm, well, let’s see, shall we?’