I decided against drawing the curtains – no point provoking an already irritable Ava – and took one of the trays back to my bed in the gloom. The strange dream was already fading, losing its power. Just a dream. No particular reason why I should be scared by it. It hadn’t been that frightening, really. No blood, no corpses. Just that voice, and a sense of menace. And the bird, though that hadn’t been scary either. Solemn, though. As if its message was one that mattered.

But there I was with the poshest breakfast in bed ever, and a rose! I thought of the bouquet Mark had got Mum back at the beginning of the year, the way the colour of it had made everything else in our flat seem pale and drab in comparison. He certainly was introducing us to the high life. Looking at Ava now, though, I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d had a bit more of it than was good for her.

It turned out that Ava was determined to stay in bed for as long as possible, and wouldn’t be persuaded otherwise. I wasn’t surprised she had a headache: I’d seen the way she’d knocked back her wine the previous night. Just like Dad. Maybe I should have warned her not to overdo it, but I knew how much that would have annoyed her and it didn’t seem like a great idea to get her back up on what was meant to be a celebratory night.

I retreated to the bathroom and read a bit more of Wuthering Heights, but when it was getting on for nine o’clock and there was still no sign of life from Ava I decided I’d have to take action. I prodded her as gently as I could and tried to persuade her to at least have her croissant, and she said I could have it if I was so worried about it. That was when I knew she really must be feeling bad and wasn’t just making excuses because she still didn’t like Mark that much and didn’t feel like having to hang out with him all day. I wasn’t sure why she wasn’t keen on Mark – he seemed pretty much perfect to me – but there it was. It was like when you put two magnets together same pole to same pole and they try and push each other away; I couldn’t help but feel that if events had lined up differently, they’d get along just fine.

They actually reminded me of each other. They were both soft-centre people – the kind that pretend to be cool and hard when at their cores, they’re all mush. I was the opposite, and so was Mum: friendly and keen to please on the outside, invisible steel in the heart. People thought we were the easy-going ones, the weak ones, but actually, they underestimated us. Or so I liked to think.

After all, wasn’t what I had – the flashes of perception, glimpses of half-understood things that later turned out to be true – a kind of strength?