‘I don’t need charity! I’m doing fine!’

‘I’m not offering charity. I’m offering you a job and somewhere to live,’ I say firmly, sounding much more professional than I feel. I’ve done one day on a market stall and I’m going to make daily desserts for Henri. I’ve barely started and have no idea how I’m going to support another two people. But I have a house, a safe one, which is more than this is. I shudder. The front door slams and the shouting starts upstairs again. We look towards the curtain-for-a-door and the stairwell.

‘I’m offering you a job, a place to live, and food,’ I repeat.

She stares at me defiantly, wanting to turn down my offer, but eventually she says, ‘I will think about it,’ as if she has lots of options right now.

‘But one thing, Steph—’

‘Stephanie. You can call me Stephanie,’ she says, rolling out the name with beautiful vowel sounds. ‘I prefer Stephanie.’

‘Stephanie,’ I say. ‘Just one thing. We all need a second chance in life but there won’t be a third. If you steal from me, you will have to leave. Understood?’ I am shaking inside but I can hear my mother’s voice speaking kindly but firmly to me as a teenager. The boundaries need to be put in place for this arrangement to work. Mum would probably have done the same as I’m doing now. My friends were always coming to her when they’d fallen out with their parents. She’d put food on the table and make up a bed, let their parents know they were safe and send them home in the morning. This is me, learning from my mum.

There is more shouting outside. This time Tomas cries and Ralph starts barking. There is louder shouting. Tomas cries harder. Stephanie gazes at her son. ‘Okay, I will come and look.’ Within minutes their belongings have been shoved into blue carrier-bags that look as if they’ve done many moves before. Tomas is clutching Monsieur Lapin as we pull back the curtain and it falls, listlessly, open.

The man stops shouting mid-flow and turns his attention to Stephanie, clutching Tomas and her blue bags.

‘Hey!’ he shouts, and talks quickly at her, his arms flying. Clearly he’s the landlord, or the tenant who’s letting the rooms. He wants to know what she’s doing. She can’t just run out on the room. She has to pay rent. She stands there and, for a moment, she looks like a young child herself. An older woman, possibly his wife, the one shouting, wearing a faded dirty dressing-gown, follows him down the stairs. My hackles rise.