‘Fran must be upstairs. I’ll go and get her.’ Lightly I make my way up the wide staircase to my little box room, a tiny bubble of hope blooming inside me at the thought that Laurel might be back home with us soon. Fran must have finally gone up to get some sleep, I think to myself, before muffled voices come from the room above me, the attic room that Fran and Dominic converted into their huge, spacious bedroom before Laurel was even born. Stealthily, I creep up the tiny staircase, telling myself that I’m going to knock and make sure that Fran doesn’t need anything. But my hand doesn’t tap on the door. Instead, I find myself pressing my ear to the wooden panel, holding my breath in order to be as silent as possible.

‘No. No, honestly, it’s all going to be fine,’ I hear Fran say, as her footsteps pace across the wooden floorboards. ‘I don’t know why . . . look, it will be OK. I promise. I can deal with this. I’m OK on my own.’ More pacing, her voice becoming indistinct as she steps away from the door, presumably towards the windows that face the back garden. I lift a hand and tap the door lightly before she discovers me.

‘Fran?’ I push the door open, seeing her hand slide her phone into her pocket. ‘Is everything OK? I thought I heard voices?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t say I’m OK.’ She gives me a tight smile. She still looks terrible – her skin washed out and grey, and her eyes puffy – but she has given her lashes a lick of mascara, and her lips shimmer with a faint, rosy glow, achieved from a tube of lip gloss. ‘I was just . . . I was talking to my mother.’

‘Oh?’ I don’t know what else to say. Fran very rarely mentions her mother. She told me once, rolling in after a late-night boozy wrap party, that she didn’t get along too well with her mum. That it was her mother’s fault that her father had left them, taking his generous bank balance with him.

‘She offered to fly over here. Although what she can do to help I don’t know.’ Fran shakes her head, sadly. ‘I don’t want her fussing over me. It’ll simply be easier if she stays where she is. And anyway, Dominic won’t want her here.’