He pressed the bell again. Impatient. But the books did look heavy. And they had to be a present for us. Why else would he have brought them?

Our buzzer still wasn’t working, so I grabbed my keys and ran downstairs and opened the door to the block. When he saw who it was he smiled as if I wasn’t quite the person he was looking for and said, ‘Hi, Ellie. Is your mum home?’

‘She’s working, but she shouldn’t be too much longer. Would you like to come in?’

Mark checked his watch. ‘I thought she was always home by five,’ he said. It was already quarter past.

I wondered what she’d been telling him. She was often back later than this, and it wasn’t unusual for Ava to emerge from our bedroom at some point in the evening and make us something to eat, leaving a plateful for Mum when she finally got home.

Maybe Mum wanted Mark to think that she was always here to cook dinner and look after us. Which would have been nice, if only because Ava did her best to ignore me most of the time. But we managed fine the way things were.

‘She’ll be home soon,’ I said. ‘Do you want to come on up? Those look heavy.’

‘Sure, if that’s OK,’ Mark said. ‘Is Ava in?’

‘Yeah, she’s in,’ I said.

How typical that he wanted to know if Ava was there. What a disappointment it would have been if it’d just been boring little me.

I showed him up to the flat, and he put the books down on the kitchen table with a sigh of relief.

There were perhaps six of them, beautifully bound, with gold on the edges of the pages and the titles printed on the covers in gold script. The one on the top was The Mayor of Casterbridge, which didn’t exactly sound exciting, but it looked so fancy it could have been the most boring book in the world and I’d still have wanted to try and read it. I don’t know why people say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Everyone does.

Ava came in. She was wearing an old hoodie and skinny jeans and she didn’t have any make-up on and she probably hadn’t brushed her hair since the morning, but she still looked good.

‘Hello, Mark.’ She didn’t exactly sound pleased to see him. ‘Mum’s not here.’

‘So I gather. It’s OK, I won’t wait for her. I don’t want to intrude. I just wanted to drop these off for you.’

For Ava?

But I was the one who loved reading. He knew that.

Ava cast an eye over the books. The corners of her mouth turned down. She said, ‘Why?’

‘Because they’re classics,’ Mark explained patiently, ‘and if you haven’t read them, you should. As part of your general education.’ He glanced at me as if only just remembering I was there. ‘And you should too, Ellie. When you’re a bit older.’