All the way home in the car my father and Auntie Viv shouted ugly things at each other. But every time I closed my eyes the car and the passing lights spun round so sickeningly, and I had to concentrate so hard on not vomiting, that I didn’t care what else was happening. When we got inside the house I tried to hold on to Viv. I felt so ill that I wanted someone to look after me, but she pushed me away.

‘That’s enough of that,’ she mumbled.

I managed to get myself upstairs and into the bathroom before I threw up.

Much later, when I lay shivering under the blankets, I could still hear the two of them storming at each other downstairs.

I only saw Auntie Viv two or three more times after that, then her visits stopped altogether. I missed her, and the Woman’s Own, and my fringe grew too long and hung in my eyes. ‘Isn’t she going to come and see us any more?’ I asked Ted at last.

‘No,’ he admitted. He looked depressed, but he tried to cover it up. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea, eh? And she had no business acumen, you know. None whatsoever. Anyway, you’re my girl. That’s quite enough for me.’

This was blatantly untrue, of course, although I still wanted to believe him and was disappointed when the next auntie arrived. She was thin, and wore matador pants and black rollneck sweaters. Her hair was cut in a gamine crop and she called herself Maxine. She had a strong aversion to jealous, beady-eyed, twelve-year-old daughters and she didn’t mind showing it. But, I thought, I wasn’t a kid any more. Not after the sudden shaft of illumination that had come to me on the evening of Viv’s birthday. I wouldn’t let Maxine know that I cared about anything.

I put Viv’s photograph back into the manila envelope. One of the other photographs, of a woman with windblown hair sitting on a stone wall, stirred a faint memory but I couldn’t place her or recall a name. I put the envelope aside to be kept along with Ted’s evening scarf and his silver-backed hairbrush and the address book. It didn’t take me long to clear the rest of the room. Everything that didn’t go in the rubbish bags or on to the Oxfam pile could be left to the house-clearance people. And once the house was empty, it could go on the market.

Ted’s solicitor and I had already talked about his will. Half of his estate was to come to me and the other half was to be divided equally between Lola and Jack. Apart from the house, which was mortgaged, and a couple of thousand pounds in the bank, he didn’t have anything else to leave.