‘I saw your mum,’ I say. I am so pleased that, for once, I have something to give to Ariel after everything she’s done for me. ‘I didn’t handle it very well, but tomorrow I will. She’s here, Ariel. She’s in town. She lives in my world. I met her. I guess we’ve met the parents.’

‘Did you take a photo?’

‘Not today, but tomorrow I will, I promise. I know what to do now. I talked to her, Ariel. She was carrying Sasha, so now I’ve met Sasha too! Cute baby. Tomorrow I’ll say the right things.’

My dad is married to Mrs Dupont. It sounds like they’re happy. Good, I guess.

‘Tell me everything,’ Ariel whispers, and I do, although there isn’t much more to say. I knocked on the door, knew her mum’s name and her baby’s name, and told her I was a ghost. She pushed me out, locked the door and closed the curtains. I sledged down a cliff a few times and walked through the sea.

‘She looked like you,’ I say when I’ve finished. ‘Completely like you. So much that I thought it was you with Sasha’s baby and that I’d gone further into the future. You can’t be at all like your dad. How old is your mum?’

‘Twenty-six,’ she says, so quickly that I know she calculated it long ago. ‘Sasha’s six months old. Mum was twenty-six when she had Sasha and thirty when she had me. She had two miscarriages in between.’ She frowns a little in thought. ‘Ask if you can tidy the garden or something, for charity. Something that doesn’t involve you going into the house. Then chat about the baby and tell her your mum left you to move to India. She’ll feel sorry for you.’

I say, ‘I guess your dad would be around in my time then?’

She shrugs. ‘Maybe. He can go fuck himself.’

‘I was just wondering if I could go and find him and tell him that. Just because it would feel good.’

Ariel grins. ‘Yeah. You can.’

‘Have you not heard from him at all?’

‘No. Can you believe that? I sent him an email that one time. I didn’t tell Sasha. And he ignored it.’

Ariel stops abruptly and takes some deep breaths. ‘I guess I should be charitable and look on it as him having a mental breakdown, but I can’t. I feel stupid for trying to contact him. He’s as dead to me as Mum is now. More so.’

‘Was he bad before? Before your mum got ill, I mean?’