I could do it. If I slide my chair back quietly, I could be—

‘How is it going?’

‘Uh! What?’ I jump like I’ve been hit by an arrow.

‘I said, how is it going?’

Granddad is standing right behind me.

‘Erm, it’s okay, Granddad,’ I say.

‘But this page is blank.’

‘Yeah, umm . . . er . . . It’s because it’s too dark, Granddad,’ I say. ‘I can’t see what I’m doing.’

‘But we can solve that.’ He bends down and flicks a switch on the wall. A side lamp flashes in my face.

I cover my eyes.

‘Sorry.’ Granddad directs the beam down to my book. ‘There,’ he says. ‘I am thinking this is better.’ He reaches across the table and picks up Of Mice and Men.

‘Umm,’ he says. ‘I have not seen this one. Is it any good?’

‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘But it’s better when someone else reads it out.’

Granddad chuckles. ‘You are crafty,’ he says. I screw my eyes as he raps his knuckles on my head. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I will try to help you. Start here.’

‘It’s okay, Granddad,’ I say. ‘I can do it.’

‘But I know you have problems.’

‘Problems?’

‘Your mother said when she came over last night. She said she was telling you to behave at school, but you wouldn’t listen. You locked yourself in your room.’

‘I didn’t lock it. I just closed it.’ Granddad nods but I’m not sure he believes me. ‘It’s true, Granddad – my door hasn’t even got a lock . . . So what did she say?’

‘Oh, it was nothing,’ says Granddad. ‘Just things like this – that you don’t settle to do anything and of course that you are having special lessons at school.’

‘But I don’t actually need them,’ I say. ‘And what does Mum know anyway? She’s always too busy working at the factory. Nobody’s got any time since Dad’s business went bust and Grandma di—’

I stop myself.

Granddad looks up at me. I think we both know the word I was going to say, but we’ve never spoken it since Grandma went. We never say the D word, we always say ‘gone’, like she has just gone to the shops for a paper, or like she went to see Mrs Danes next door. We don’t say she never came back.

Granddad looks at my book.

‘Maybe we should just try,’ he says softly.

I take a deep breath. Maybe I should at least have a go because he is making an effort to help.

Granddad taps his finger on the first word and starts to read.