Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. The smaller room had been hers, and when she had moved back in just over a year ago, the posters from her teenage years were still Blu Tacked to the wall. George Michael wearing ripped jeans and a leather jacket, Rick Astley, Whitney Houston and Patrick Swayze. It was sad to think that they were all dead now apart from Rick, and he had been her least favourite anyway. In her parents’ bedroom, the Laura Ashley wallpaper had been there since the 80s. Her mum had saved up and then splashed out on it. The paper had a cream background with tiny sprigs of blue flowers and her mum had loved the pattern. It hadn’t been cheap, and they never had money to throw around, but she had seen it in a magazine at the hairdresser’s and set her heart on it. Billie remembered that there hadn’t been quite enough, but to save the expense of another roll, her dad had left a gap behind the chest of drawers. Her mum never knew.

It had been a happy house and they had been a close-knit family. Billie had always felt safe in the certainty of being loved. Even when her dad had died here, the memory of it wasn’t sad. It had been his time to go, and he left peacefully, without pain, sleeping in his own bed. When she found him the next morning, he almost looked as though he was smiling. And now, on this new pencil case kind of day, there would be a fresh start for Billie. The house was sold, she had said her goodbyes and now she could move on. But to what?

As Billie locked the front door for the last time and dropped the keys through the letterbox, Rita Barnet, the elderly neighbour, came out to speak to her.

‘End of an era, Billie. That’s what it is – the end of an era. I still remember the day when your mum and dad moved in, only a few weeks after us. They were good friends to me, especially after my Tony died. I’m not looking forward to the new lot moving in. They look a bit la-di-da to me.’

‘They seem all right, Rita. You probably won’t see that much of them. I think they both work in the City.’

Rita folded her arms and hugged them to her bony chest. ‘What did I tell you – la-di-da.’

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