I shrugged. ‘Yeah, we get along.’

‘And Ava? How is she with him?’

Suddenly I didn’t like this any more. Ava wouldn’t be at all happy that I was even having this conversation. I’d gone against her once already today. I wasn’t about to do it again.

‘She’s fine with him, actually. Thanks for the books,’ I said, and turned and walked back towards the flat.

He’s just going to get in the way. Still, nothing to be done about it. Not yet, anyway.

Had I imagined it? The words were so clear it was as if he’d just spoken them. He looked startled when I turned back and stared at him, then attempted to smile and wave and got into the car and drove away.

Upstairs in the kitchen, Ava was looking at one of the books. They seemed somehow ominous – too big, too red, radiating a faint sense of not-quite-right. I remembered the roses Mark had bought Mum, the colour of them, dark and bright like blood.

‘Don’t do that,’ she said.

‘Don’t do what?’

‘Play his game. Whatever it is.’

She put down the book. It was Great Expectations, which I had heard of, maybe. It seemed like a good idea to have quite a long word in a book’s title, so that people knew to take it seriously.

‘You just don’t want to like him,’ I said.

‘You want to like him too much,’ she said. ‘You should remember this isn’t that big a deal. He gave us something he could easily afford to give. That doesn’t mean we owe him anything.’

And she went off to the bedroom and closed the door, leaving me alone with the books.

Six

Ava

After Mark gave us the books, any time he came near our place, Ellie would start ostentatiously reading. He couldn’t help but notice, and seemed pleased, though I got the impression Ellie’s approval wasn’t crucial to him.

Maybe that was because it was so easy to get. If he was the kind of guy who liked a challenge, I was currently the only one out of the three of us who was giving him one. I wasn’t hostile, exactly, but I wasn’t falling over myself to make him welcome. He’d have to earn that, and he couldn’t do it just by buying us expensive presents.

Every now and then it was obvious that Mum wished I’d be a little warmer towards him, but weeks went by without us really talking about it. The only person who seemed to realise that I was out of sorts was Toby Andrews at school, who got up the nerve to approach me and actually asked if I was OK. I wasn’t about to admit how I was feeling to Toby, though. I wasn’t mean to him, I just gave him a discouraging look and told him I was fine. After all, what could he have done about it? I half hoped that Mark would lose interest. But what really bothered me was that part of me really didn’t want him to abandon us.