I’m lying with my head on the pillow and Luce’s feet beside me, top to tail. She’s wriggling her toes and tickling mine. I hate my feet being touched. Mother likes to rub her calloused ones against mine. ‘Don’t, Luce.’ Then she burrows down in the bed, reaches out towards my hips and circles me with her arms, her face pressing against my belly. I draw back the quilt so she can breathe. She flips her body back right-side-up so her head is lying beside mine on the pillow and she strokes my hair.

‘I really don’t know what I’d do without you,’ she says, which is exactly the kind of thing Mother says when she’s in one of her gooey rheumy-eyed moods. Luce snuggles in close, her breath in my nostrils, my own getting tangled in her rhythms. She falls asleep again, her forehead pressed against mine. I move my head away so I can see her more clearly. She has a crease between her eyes that makes her look so much older than fifteen, yet her long gangly body is like a child’s that has bits attached to it that do not belong. I look down at my own, and poke my knobbly knees.

At breakfast, Mrs O’D serves us an assortment of mini cereal packs, her eyes puffy and vague, not focusing on either of us. Weirdly, I’m starving. We both choose Frosties. Luce eats hers while they are still crispy, but I like mine all soggy.

‘Did you sleep ok?’ Mrs O’D asks, trying very hard to make a show of politeness.

‘Greeeeeeaaaaat …’ I say, which makes her turn her back and stiffen.

‘No news from your parents yet, Sam. I wonder is everything all right?’ She’s looking out the window at that sickly tree with those scabby branches, which even in daylight look like night-time shadows.

‘Mother won’t have woken up yet, and Dad is probably away on “business”.’

She chooses to ignore this. ‘So have you got your story straight this morning? I hear the events of the evening were confused last night.’

I chomp so loudly that my jaw clicks.

‘I don’t remember exactly. It was a bit of a blur, to be honest. Waaaay too much wodka.’

‘And I suppose you don’t remember either, Lucy, do you?’

‘You saw how drunk I was …’

‘I see. So what is the point of making this statement if all we have is two drunken witnesses who can remember nothing about what happened?’

‘My thoughts exactly, Mrs O’D.’

Mrs O’D turns around to face us directly, her hands gripping the worktop. ‘Do you feel the same way, Lucy?’

‘I didn’t see anything. It was too dark.’

She seems to have come to her senses this morning, back to her normal dreary self, not a whiff of the hysteria of last night about her.