‘Two months tomorrow,’ I say. ‘I don’t think people live in our flats for long.’

He smirks. ‘Yeah, the landlord gave me that impression as well. What do you make of him, old Sandy Balls?’

I laugh too. ‘He hasn’t exactly got people skills, has he?’

‘Have you met the junkies in the flat between us?’

‘No, they keep to themselves.’ The flat between us. One flat away from us living together. One floor of separation. I wonder if his bed is directly above my bed. I wonder if he lies on top of me at night. My cheeks go warm at the thought.

‘Where were you before?’ he asks.

‘Nottingham,’ I tell him. This is true, but I was only there for a few months, less than a year. I can’t tell him any more than that. And I can’t tell him about Liverpool or Dumfries, or Manchester or Scarborough… certainly not Scarborough.

‘Ah, fancied taking in the sea air, did ya?’

‘Mmm. I prefer the flat here to the one they gave me in Nottingham.’

‘Who’s they?’

‘The council,’ I lie. ‘That one was awful. I never got a full night’s sleep. Drunks would spill out of the clubs below every hour through the night. And the fridge had slugs in it.’

‘Nasty.’

‘Yeah. The one drawback here is that it’s a basement flat, not top floor, so I often get a drunk peeing in the front garden or a can thrown over the wall.’

‘Better for the little one here though, I’d have thought?’

‘Yeah. Much.’ I kiss the top of Emily’s fluffy head.

My god I can barely look at him. In anyone’s storybook he is stunning. He’s every Disney prince only four-dimensional and with smell-a-vision. I could look at him for the rest of my life. His eyes sparkle like the sea and he has faint freckles on his cheeks. If I get to know him better, I’ll count his freckles. I’ll lie next to him counting them, waiting for him to wake up in the morning. I wonder if he sleeps naked. I blush again, furiously, and it goes all down my neck too. I pretend to focus on Emily.

‘Do you have any family?’ he asks. ‘Apart from Emily?’

I shake my head. ‘No.’ I think about telling Kaden the well-rehearsed lies that Scants gave me, but I don’t want to lie to him. I want him to know as much of the truth as possible. So I leave out the untrue stuff. ‘I live alone.’

‘Oh right,’ he says. Is that pity in his eyes?

‘How about you?’