I just wanted her to say how out of control she’d been, to tell me how she understood what her actions were doing to me, how it made me feel. I didn’t want any more empty promises, no more sucking up or trying to make things better with cheap crap that didn’t matter.

Remembering the hidden car keys and phone, I nodded and said, ‘Okay, let’s go to lunch.’

Mum hugged me and the smell of her breath repulsed me. She walked into her ensuite to ‘freshen up’.

I took my clothes into the other bathroom. As I stood beneath the water, watching it roll over my thighs, I wondered if there was anything else I needed to say.

When I pulled on my T-shirt I realised that I hadn’t actually told Mum how her drinking made me feel. All I’d told her was not to drink again, and she was just trying to brush it off.

When I stepped out of the bathroom, Mum was racing around the house in a pair of linen shorts, doing up the buttons on a white shirt.

‘Phoebe, have you seen my phone?’ she asked, predictably.

Taking satisfaction in her distress, I said, ‘Did you leave it at the pub?’

Mum didn’t answer, just moved on to the next obvious spot: the mantelpiece.

I calmly went to my room and packed things into my bag.

Mum ducked her head in with a look of fear on her face. ‘Phoebe, can you help me look for it?’

‘Look for what?’ I said, acting like I had no idea what she meant.

‘My phone!’

‘Why don’t you call the pub to see if it’s there?’

Mum sped into the kitchen and I listened in as she spoke on the landline to someone at the pub, all panicked. I took her phone and keys from beneath my mattress and placed them in my bag. Then I went and sat on the lounge to see how Mum would react.

‘It’s not there,’ she said, frantically. ‘Let me think.’ I could see the act of trying to think was hard work for her.

‘I was playing music through it, it’s got to be here,’ she said.

Oh crap, I thought, now I have to make her phone suddenly appear somewhere she’s not already searched.

‘Well, if it’s here, can’t you look for it later? I’m starving.’

Mum’s face went blank at the thought of walking out of the house without her phone. I knew she wanted to smooth things over with me, like she always tried to do when she messed up.

‘Okay then,’ she said slowly. She picked up her bag from the lounge room floor and started searching through it, obviously for her keys. Within seconds she was taking out all of the contents and searching through every pocket.