‘It wasn’t happening then. It only started when Dad left. Sasha, I’m scared. What if they say I’m mad and send me away to a –’ I reached for the most dramatic thing I could to make my fears into a joke – ‘a Victorian asylum? Where I’d be chained to a bed and fed gruel, and the ghosts there would be really bad. I mean, they’d be proper ghosts, right? Sheet ones.’

‘That’s a possibility,’ she conceded, ‘but it’s just a chance you’ll have to take.’ She paused, serious again. ‘If you don’t want to do anything official you could always talk to your French teacher. Hey, feel this. Hang on.’

She put my hand on her bump and I waited. I could feel a hard little lump in there, a foot probably.

‘Hey, baby,’ I said. ‘Hey, nephew.’

We were spending an inordinate amount of time working on the perfect name for him. Sasha liked the fancy names (her current favourites were Rafael and Gabriel). His middle name should have been the male version of Mum’s name, Anna, except that as far as we could work out that would have been Alan or Andrew, and Sasha didn’t fancy either of them. ‘They don’t sound anything like Mum,’ she said, so I was allowed to choose the middle name, subject to Sasha’s approval, as Jai was currently too freaked out to be allowed a say. I spent far longer thinking of boys’ names than you’d expect, but I didn’t currently have anything that was exactly right.

The baby kicked me and just for a moment all the bad feelings went away. I cuddled up to my sister. We never used to be friends. Now she was everything.

By Monday I was feeling strong, but as soon as I left the house I started to freak out again. I went and stood on the beach in the blustery sunshine, and looked out at the sea. I inhaled the salty, greasy air, and took deep breaths until I thought I was ready to face school. I felt so different sometimes. Different from everyone else, and different from myself.

By the time I arrived, late, the stragglers like me were heading to their tutor rooms. I walked slowly, doing my breathing exercises, playing Mum’s voice in my head talking about the cloud tops of Venus. I’d had a domestic weekend with Sasha. I’d seen the sea. I could do this.

Mum’s anniversary was in three days’ time. I had been motherless for a year.

I pushed my fingers through my hair, walked round the corner and stopped.

The corridor was empty because everyone but me was in tutor. However, it wasn’t empty. It was crowded.