While Joel starts chatting to Douglas, I go over and check on Alfie, giving them a bit of space.

‘Right, we’re back. Let’s win this thing,’ Soph calls.

‘Shhh, you’ll wake Alfie,’ Brett says, slipping his arm around her.

‘Sorry, was he OK?’ She leans over his pram where he’s still fast asleep.

‘Didn’t make a peep.’

‘Let’s get this game going then.’

We all put our names into the hat to see who’s performing the sudden death charade, and Joel’s name gets picked.

We shuffle a little closer on our seats to get a better view.

‘Movie,’ shouts Soph as Joel starts.

‘Two words,’ says Miles.

‘Musical.’ Brett claps his hands together.

‘That’s not the mime for musical,’ tuts Soph.

‘It’s horror. Horror movie,’ Douglas yells.

It was hectic enough playing in teams but now that there’s five people shouting out answers at the same time, Joel looks flustered trying to keep up, but he perseveres.

‘Whole concept,’ shouts Miles.

Joel starts to turn his head.

‘The Exorcist,’ I shout and Joel jumps up and points at me.

‘Got it in one.’

‘How did you get that so quickly?’ asks Soph.

Miles leans over and kisses my head. ‘Who cares how. We won!’

Only I care. For the same reason I felt uneasy that Miles and I weren’t in sync with our guesses, I feel uneasy that Joel and I are with ours.

Chapter 23

Big Little Readers night has soon become one of my favourite parts of my week. I left work a little earlier than usual to come tonight, as I wanted to check with Adrian about some specific books I was hoping to bring along with me to Lola’s house. We are making progress with her, but she still won’t talk in the sessions and I think that Arnold may be right, that talking about my own experience with loss could help.

‘I was wondering if you had any books on grief? I have an idea I want to try to get Lola to open up to us.’

‘Oh, yes, I think there are some.’ He goes to the other end of the children’s section and runs his fingers along the spines on the bookcase until he finds what he’s looking for. ‘Here we go.’

He pulls out a couple of books, checks the back and then puts them into our box ready to take.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome. I hope the reading goes well.’

Arnold and I pull up outside Lola’s house and he turns to me. ‘You all right, love?’