He glares as if he actually hates me.

‘Fuck you,’ he says, and I am pleased to find that I’m feeling something. This is better. I feel more alive now than I have all day. I decide to laugh at him like I do with Lucas.

‘Fuck you,’ I say, and I walk away, still laughing like (I hope) someone very cool who will make him feel stupid, rather than a pantomime baddy. I hear him shouting behind me so I go and sit in the little room where he won’t find me, and attempt to talk some sense into myself.

Mum went to do a course to become a yoga teacher. I’m pretty sure she’s in India now because she always said she needed to learn proper yoga over there. I think I’ve known for a while that her leaving has messed with my head in all sorts of ways. I can barely remember some things from before she went. I’m not even sure how long it’s been. A month? A year? Maybe a year.

I have no problem with anyone doing a yoga course that lasts maybe a year, but my own mother could have waited until we’d left home. Three years from now she could have done whatever she wanted. Three years must be a really short time when you’re fifty. It’s a tiny fraction of your life, whereas for me it’s a lot.

One day when things were going weird with Marco I left school through the back hedge at lunchtime and came into town to try to work out what the fuck was going on. I got a cheap hoodie at H&M so I didn’t look like I was truanting and tried to find a place to sit where no one would see me. I was about to head to the beach when I thought I’d try a passage around the back of the mall, which I’d never noticed before. The passage went along for a little way, with pipes and a cleaning trolley, and then there was a door that was slightly open. I pushed it and there was my secret room. I sat inside for ages.

At that point it became my place to go whenever I secretly needed to think. I keep a blanket in there, a pink fluffy one that Mum used to use for yoga. It’s a comfort blanket. No one can ever know.