In the spare bedroom with the lights still on, Heather sat in the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, waiting for the nausea to pass. There was a bucket on the floor next to her. She had screwed up the note and thrown it in the bin in the bathroom, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the words, so neat and so damning. It hadn’t looked like her mother’s handwriting, but then how familiar was she with it, anyway? Not to mention the fact that it had been written in big, upper-case letters, much closer to the way her dad had used to write his notes: Post-its on the fridge for more milk, or receipts for building work. Nikki had said, she reminded herself, that suicidal people were very ill, that they might not be thinking clearly when they wrote their notes – perhaps this message had been her mother at her most unwell, writing accusing letters to no one in particular, or perhaps even to herself. She wanted to believe that, for the shred of comfort it gave her, but she didn’t.

She knew the note was for her.

It made sense. It was too close to all the barbs her mother had thrown at her in the months before she had finally moved out. Back then, in the dark days following her dad’s funeral, the two of them had been in a state of war, all the conflicts between them finally exposed by the loss of the one person that had kept them together.

There had been hours of silence, long periods where they kept out of each other’s way, but inevitably something would cause the other to erupt – one of her dad’s old trainers wedged under the fold-away table, or a tub of the ice cream he especially liked left in the freezer. And then, like splinters working their way under the skin, these little reminders of his absence – of what Heather had done – tore all the wounds open again.

Reluctantly, Heather remembered bringing the injured bird home in her arms, still carefully wrapped in her T-shirt. She had hidden it in her room, finding an old shoe box and stuffing it with rags. She had filled up a little pot of water, stolen a handful of breakfast cereal, thinking it might eat that. Looking back, she was amazed she had done it – obviously she couldn’t have kept it hidden for long, and she hadn’t the faintest idea of how to look after animals; she had never been allowed any pets, after all.