She goes into the back room again. She wishes her dad would buy them a big TV like Billy’s. Maybe if he took on more jobs. She could make posters to advertise. He is sporadic with the work he does take on, but likes it that way. She wishes she could read his palm, too, to find out what kind of person he really is. She wonders if bad people’s hands are different to everyone else’s.

But there are other questions too that his hands cannot answer.

She wants to play her CD, the soundtrack to Frozen, her guilty pleasure, but she cannot find it. Has her father really tidied it away? She rummages through the cupboard on one side of the fire in the back room, running her finger along her father’s albums, a strange mixture of heavy metal and folk. She remembers that the last time she looked in this cupboard it was a mess, with CDs lying out of their cases and odds and ends of guitar paraphernalia: string packets, picks, the black snakes of electric leads. When she opens the cupboard an overpowering smell, like rotting meat and honeysuckle, hits her in the back of the throat. The cupboard is very neat and, after reading the names of several CD spines, she realizes they have been arranged in alphabetical order. With her hand over her mouth and nose to mask the putrid smell, she finds the Frozen soundtrack in between a group of albums by Faith No More and Na h-Òganaich. The shelf has also been decorated with a line of small polished stones, pale yellow and a glassy purple. Lauren holds one of each up to the light and puts them in her pocket.

She plays the CD in the stereo of the alcove. At first the music makes a strange, mournful noise and she thinks she must have taken the wrong CD. A woman’s voice wailing. She takes it out and rubs it with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. The second time around the music plays clearly.

She goes upstairs to get another jumper and is taken aback by her tidy room, filled with a similar heady scent, sweeter than before. Her books are ordered by her bedside table and the bed itself is made, with her stuffed duck, Webster, sitting happily on a pillow patterned with octopuses and jellyfish. There are no clothes on the floor or any of the little horses she likes to play with. All her clothes are in her cupboard and her wooden menagerie marches along her windowsill as though they are heading to Noah’s Ark. Thanks, Dad, she thinks, feeling sure he must be a good person, who doesn’t hurt anyone. She is pleased she made him a cup of tea before she left that morning.