The car pulls up outside the house and Nico and I both pad barefoot up the newly tarred driveway. The inky blackness beneath me is swelling and rolling. Is this the Black Sea? Are we walking on water? We are special, all right, the chosen ones. It’s weird not finding that funny, the thought just rolls up and out before I have time to laugh. Nico’s legs look tiny and frail; all her athleticism seems to have been sucked out of her after the night’s sport.

Irina is waiting at the door and her usually blank face wears a look of worry that cuts deep.

‘Come in,’ she says, ‘you must eat something’ – like she’s playing the part of a loving mum. We both follow her into the kitchen where some other girls are seated, the sisters and another one who I’ve never seen before, could be Eastern European, with her wide eyes and face. She’s older than the rest of us and plain, in a soft, pudgy, non-remarkable way. I doubt any of the guys in school would have given her a ride, I think harshly, appraising her wares, but still I don’t laugh. It’s super early and that birdie is singing her little heart out. I wish she wouldn’t do that, it makes my whole body ache. Winter is coming and soon she’ll fly away to sunnier climes, thank fuck. How do they rev up their batteries to that extent, power up their tiny bodies to travel thousands, even hundreds of thousands of kilometres? It must be the singing that does it, generates that kind of turbo boost. I know that feeling myself, although I can’t think of a single song right now, not a single Eminem lyric to inspire. Blankety blank, and into the gaps the songbird tweets.

Nico sips a glass of OJ slowly as she stares out the window, her face blurred at the edges. Granny Mona always wore that rheumy, misty, eyes-full-of-tears look at the end. I used to watch her watch her daughter, when she couldn’t speak, and those eyes said it all: How did this happen? What did I do wrong? Poor old Granny Mona always had a soft spot for me, buying me bags of liquorice and dipping sticks, which Mother would confiscate the minute we left the stinking old folks’ home where she’d been left to rot.

‘She’s the reason I am the way I am,’ Mother used to say.

Funny that, cos I always thought it was because of me.

I pour a long cold glass of water and sip slowly, scared of the ripping sensation in my throat.

Irina says, ‘I did not know about last night until after you were gone.’