“A new start,” she called it, without asking me if I even wanted one, because it was obvious I didn’t, and I said, “Haven’t we had our share of those?” One for every Mark that turned out not to be God’s gift after all. Such an over-investor. She might as well have invented the concept of eggs in one basket. Eight full new starts, and three or four half-hearted versions, where I didn’t have to move schools at least, just took way longer to get there and was always late for everything, always left behind. It was always like that, since my dad, I guess, who was the first but who came and went just like the others. A link in a chain, and a stranger now. If I saw him in the street I wouldn’t know him. Sad but true. I’ve made my peace with that.

This time, phase-one Mum was really shaking things up. Maybe I should have been more positive. She was doing it by herself, after all. Declaring independence. But at the time, she knew how I felt about it. I reminded her it had taken work to make even the few friends I had. I said we both knew there was no way I’d be able to keep them, not at that distance. I wanted that to count for something. I was looking for mercy, but that well was dry.

“You’ll get new friends,” she said, like I could just pick some out in a gift shop, like that was how easy it was, and it stunned me, the ignorance, the carelessness of that.

“Ouch,” I said. “Blunt.”

“What?” she said. “You’re good at it.”

“Yeah? Because I’ve had to be.”

“Well, life teaches us the skills we need,” she said, trying to make a virtue out of throwing me in at the social deep end every time a new Prince Charming withered on the vine.