I turn towards Mum again. ‘Why did you say what you did, at the hospital? When the doctors asked you what happened, you didn’t let me speak. You answered them before I could say anything. And I never understood why you said all that.’

My mother’s face is wary, bewildered. She is trying to understand why I’m asking. What I need. What she can do to defend herself.

‘You’re angry with me?’ she says.

No doubt she hates that we’re doing this here, in the garden, practically standing in the middle of the street. Outside, where all the neighbours can see us. She’d want us to be sitting down inside, properly, talking this through calmly and safely. But my body still shudders at the thought of stepping in there.

Now Mum comes down, one step, two, from the kitchen doorway. The white sheets twist and writhe on the line. ‘Are you angry with me, for what I did? For showing you I loved you? For being a good mother?’

‘Come inside, love,’ Dad says again.

Is that what I am? Am I angry? Is that what is driving me to all this? I try to scan my body and make sense of my emotions, but I can’t grasp anything, only the cold ball in my stomach, the hollowness in my legs, the scrabbling of my heart. I have no idea whether it’s anger or not.

‘I just want to know why. Why you said that.’

‘Oh love, is this about …?’ My dad looks back and forth between us. ‘Jennifer, sweetheart, we don’t have to do this. Not like this, not right now.’

‘You know though, don’t you?’ I say to him. ‘Come on, Dad, deep down, don’t you know? That it wasn’t true, what Mum said. When she told them that I fell asleep, that I wasn’t keeping an eye on him. You know that, you can feel it, can’t you? It never happened like that.’ I turn back to my mum. ‘So I just want to know, why did you have to lie? Why did you think you had to pretend?’

‘What “pretending”? For heaven’s sake, Jenn, it was my job to protect you. And you were already hurting so much by then. You were so unhappy when you came home from university, and then … everything that happened with Luke … How could I let things get any worse?’

My mind is torn, because in one way she’s saying all the right things, and yet at the same time, it just isn’t what I’ve come here to hear.

‘When I found you,’ she goes on, ‘I knew at once you never meant it. You were unhappy and confused, and so it was an accident and that’s exactly what I said.’