Eddie was 19 when he died, but he’d been taking drugs for a few years by then. It started with hash, when he was supposed to be at school. Beth would find him lying on his bed when she got home from a run, smoking a joint and complaining about how shit his life was. She’d consider reminding him that he used to have ambition, that he’d talked about going to university or joining the navy. But she never did. She just hoovered her half of the carpet – all two square metres of it – and plugged her tinny Argos headphones in. The heroin started when he met some new mates at college. He lasted six months before dropping out, then died a couple of years after that.

And of course it was Eddie she pictured when she came across that homeless man slumped unconscious on the street. It was his memory that meant she couldn’t walk past, even though she sorely wishes that she could have.

‘Where’s Dad?’ she asks. She wants to see her father, get it over with.

‘He’s sleeping. Let’s leave him for a while, give us a chance to catch up. Go on, sit down.’ Her mum gestures towards the sofa. ‘And I’ve got a surprise for you, hold on.’

The house is a tiny oblong box. One room that runs front to back, plus a kitchen behind the stairs. Beth watches her mum disappear, then perches gingerly on the sofa. She recognises it from when she lived here, and she can’t let herself think about the number of dead skin cells that must be buried in the ancient polyester. A minute later her mum reappears carrying a tray emblazoned with an image of Bucharest. There are two mugs of tea on top of it, plus a huge Cozonac cake.

‘I hope you’re hungry,’ her mum says with an anxious smile. ‘Your dad’s not interested in food much these days, so I don’t get chance to bake anymore.’ Beth wants to say thanks, but she can’t shift the bile that’s sitting in her throat. Cozonac is a Romanian festive tradition, a citrusy sweet bread with a cocoa and nut filling that gets swirled through the dough. She and Eddie rarely got actual presents when they were growing up – there wasn’t money for that – but there was a Cozonac every Christmas. For a few years Beth tried to convince her mum that she deserved the first slice, but she never succeeded. Eddie was the eldest child and a boy – two attributes that were highly valued in their traditional family home. Beth accepted her fate after a while, and by the time she lost her competition, she’d moved in with her far less traditional aunt.