‘You okay?’ she asked, all fake caring.

‘I’m fine.’ I stared at the ceiling and dropped my phone to my side.

‘Well, let me know if you want anything. Mark is giving a late lecture, but he said he’ll be home by dinner.’

I wanted the nipples to disappear so I said, ‘Thanks, Caitlin,’ in the nicest voice I could manage.

While I was waiting for Dad to get home so we could have dinner, I saw that Katie was online so I messaged her.

I felt better after talking to Katie, and it helped kill some time. Dad had arrived home by now and was calling out to me to join him and Caitlin for dinner. When I got there I saw Caitlin had placed the dal, rice and steamed vegetables on the table and then lit four candles. Three were orange, I guess to represent our happy little family, and the blue one likely represented Mum’s soul that was slipping into the pits of hell.

‘Thank you, Cait,’ Dad said before rubbing his thumb softly against her cheek. In the cosiness of the cottage, seated at the table, the candles lit and with my dad, I probably should have been in a cosmic little bubble like Caitlin had set out to make. Instead, every muscle in my body was tense, as if I’d been dragged in front of detectives, waiting to be interrogated for a crime. I knew they wanted any little bit of incriminating evidence on Mum. Was she late to dinner? Was she drinking? Was she sad? And so on.

‘How was work, Dad?’ I asked, hoping that getting him to talk about himself might throw him off track about speaking about Mum and me.

‘It was okay, only a couple of students complained to me about their poor grades despite obviously being more concerned about their social media profiles than my class.’

‘One doesn’t get presents without presence,’ Caitlin joked.

Yeah, whatever, I thought. Is that yoga crap?

‘But it’s nice to be home to have dinner with my family at a reasonable time,’ Dad continued.

I hadn’t realised Dad considered Caitlin family now.

‘It’s always a pleasure to share time with our family,’ Caitlin said.

Oh, here we go. Where’s a bucket?

I ate a mouthful of carrots. They were actually really good. Caitlin hadn’t held back on glazing them with butter and honey.

And then Dad said, full of venom, ‘How your mum could stand you up like that is beyond me.’

I exhaled and then shovelled in some dal.

‘Have you been feeling okay about things today?’ he asked.

‘I understand it must all be so hard,’ Caitlin said, ‘and starting at a new school too. We hoped that being here in The Village would give you some space from this kind of thing.’