“You cleaned that bit of floor three times.”

“No I didn't.”

“Yes you did.”

“Well, what if I did? It needs cleaning. It's disgusting. This whole place is disgusting. I can't keep anything nice; why can't I keep anything nice?”

“Mum, are you okay?”

“Yes I'm okay. Okay? Here's me saying: I. Am. O. K. Why do you keep asking me? Of course I'm okay, I'm always okay. I have to be okay. Someone has to and that's always me. Oh shut up shut shut up; shut up your stupid blabbering…” Laura had screamed at the radio, slapped at the tuning buttons, then ripped the radio plug from the wall. Everett felt embarrassed, ashamed, scared. This was not a thing he should see. It was like the walls of his safe and predictable world had turned to glass and through them he could glimpse huge, monstrous, threatening shapes.

“I'm sorry, Everett,” his mum said. “Everett, me and your Dad. He's taking…he's not coming…Well, we think it might be better if we spent some time apart. I don't know how long. Maybe quite a long time. Maybe…permanently…”

That was how Everett Singh found out that family life as he had always known it had ended, standing in his sock soles on the cold concrete back step, his school blazer over his goalkeeper kit. Boots in hand. Mum holding a squeegee mop. The radio blaring Girls Aloud. It had ended long before, he had realised. It had been ending for a long time. His parents had been lying to him for years.

He had seen the Angry nine months, two weeks, three days ago. He had hoped never to see it again, but here it was in the car with him. Granny Singh had taught Victory-Rose a Punjabi song, which she sang loudly and badly as Laura strapped her into the backseat. Laura put on Singalong with Beebles.

“Shall we sing our song, Vee-Arr? Our favourite song? Shall we? Shall we?” They sang, loudly and badly, all the up through South Tottenham and Stamford Hill.

I'm not the one to punish, Everett thought. There's no one to punish. But you need someone to ground your anger, like a lightning rod, so I'll do. I always do. Everett understood the mondegreen thing now. If his mum could sing her own words, her own interpretation, she had control, even if only of a pop song.