She runs upstairs and hears her father call her as she goes. The temperature drops when she reaches the landing. She prises off her tight shoes and wiggles her toes in the chill. Her socks are odd, one striped yellow and the other pink camouflage. All her socks seem to be separated from their partners and have to make do together. That’s how she thinks of herself and her dad: a pair of odd socks. Sometimes Niall won’t notice she has run out of clean clothes until it is too late. Maisie, with her perfect Chelsea boots, has whispered to other children that Lauren doesn’t wash. She can’t bear to tell her father that they call her a scaff. Lauren dumps her bag and coat in her dark bedroom. The dark makes her less-than-real. She feels around for the softness of her dressing gown to slip over her school uniform and take the day away. Downstairs is quiet.

She creeps over to her father’s room and slides on her belly under his bed. The floor is thick with dust. She pretends she is a car mechanic fixing up a lorry. In the dark, her dressing gown is a deep-blue boiler suit, with her name embroidered over a top pocket. She reaches around for the bumpy plastic shell of her mother’s vanity case. It isn’t in the usual spot. She has the urge to put on her mother’s lipstick. It makes her feel safe, almost protected.

The festering, flowery smell has crept up on her and she slides out again, sneezing with the dust, and looks at the bed from this different angle. The room is too gloomy, so she fetches a rubbery black torch from the hall cupboard, kept for power cuts.

Peering under the bed again, she sees the make-up case pressed against the back wall. As she tries to slide back under, the torch wobbles and falls, rolling into a couple of bin bags. She heaves them out, and finds they are full of her father’s muddy boots and trainers. Back under the bed, she also prises open a battered shoebox full of electricity bills and bank statements. Her father would go nuts if he knew she was here, but that’s partly why she likes doing it.

As she tries to turn around, her torch beam shines up towards the bedframe. The wooden slats above the vanity case have been marked with tiny drawings. When she looks closer, she sees there are perfectly printed stars, lines and circular symbols. Lauren traces her finger along the grainy surface of one illuminated slat. She can’t work out if the symbols have been inked on in the same way she inks stars on to her school bag, or if they are somehow burnt into the wood.