Sometimes she was flattered that her mother confided in her. She knew she was her mother’s best friend because her mother often said so, and Katrina was moved by the sense of her own importance; she was starting to be aware that her friends’ mothers did not rely on their daughters in the way that Katrina’s mother relied on her. Katrina’s sister Jill was seven years older than she was and had already left home to live with a boyfriend in Edinburgh. Katrina’s mother said Jill was “a person it was difficult to be close to’. Katrina felt a guilty swell of pride at this. She knew she herself was not like that.

But it was tiring sometimes. Her mother was often sad, often had low moods, and then Katrina would have to make her feel better. And Katrina was allowed to keep nothing safe or secret in her own head. Everything must be shared. If her mother suspected Katrina was holding something back, she would go on and on at her until Katrina was worn down and would either say something true or manufacture something to please her mother, like, “I had a headache today,” upon which her mother would say, “I have the most terrible headache now,” and they would have to go and get in bed together and lie in the dark for hours until it passed.

Katrina’s mother needed her more after Katrina’s father left, but Katrina wasn’t really sorry to see him go. She loved him sometimes, when he would sing his special song for her or hold her on his lap as they watched films together. But that stopped when Katrina was seven because her mother said it was “inappropriate”, a word she used often, though Katrina remained vague on its meaning given that her mother used it to encompass so many things. She missed her father’s warmth though, the cuddles he’d given her, however occasional they’d been, and the song he’d sung her: My bonnie lies over the ocean, my bonnie lies over the sea.

After Katrina’s mother used the word “inappropriate”, that bumpy, cumbersome word that seemed to carry so much power, Katrina’s father mostly acted as if Katrina wasn’t there, though he would still chat and laugh with Jill sometimes, if he was in the right mood. Occasionally, late at night, he would stumble into furniture. Katrina also knew the word “alcoholic” from a young age because she often heard her mother say it. “Disgusting alcoholic,” she would say. “I didn’t know when I married him.” Then she would lean in close to Katrina, so the scent of her perfume, a sweetness Katrina usually loved, became overpowering and sickly, and her breath smelled sour. And she would say, “Never trust a man. They’re liars. Marrying him was the worst mistake of my life.”