She lets the lady usher her forward into the beige and white room. The girl on the carpet looks up as they come through. She doesn’t look as if she’s been having much fun. There are streaks down her cheeks, as if she’s been crying. Perhaps she doesn’t much like this house. Prin imagines she’ll like their own house much better.

They stop right in front of her.

Prin looks down at the model castle. She can see the collection of plastic characters that go with it now too: a prince, a princess, a dragon.

‘What are you playing then?’ she asks.

‘Nothing really,’ Prin’s cousin says. ‘It’s just a castle.’

Prin studies this cousin who she’s never met before, who doesn’t look like much fun, who might even be a bit boring. Fiona is still standing there, waiting.

Prin’s cousin looks up again. ‘I like your dress,’ she says.

Prin reconsiders her cousin. It is a nice dress. She’s pleased her cousin said that. She drops down onto her knees, the skirt poofing out around her. The rug under her shins is a bit scratchy, but never mind. Her cousin wipes the back of her hand across her cheeks – a good thing to do. No tears in this house, Daddy would say. He says that a lot. No tears in this house, believe you me.

The lady with the badge steps back, leaving them to get along with it themselves.

The castle has different moving parts: doors you can open and close, a drawbridge you can wind up and down, banners you can clip on in different places.

Prin’s cousin sighs. ‘I’ve done all of those bits,’ she says.

Prin looks at her. Is that how she’s been playing? No wonder she wasn’t having much fun. Prin isn’t sure that she likes this cousin much. She glances through to the grown-ups in the kitchen, wondering if she would be better off with them after all. But then her cousin is looking at her so hopefully, so eagerly. So sort of admiring. And she did say that she liked Prin’s dress.

Prin wriggles on the scratchy carpet, getting a bit closer in. She’s made up her mind. She likes the feeling of knowing best. She likes having someone to tell what to do.

‘Watch me,’ she says, picking up the dragon. ‘I’ve got a much better game we can play.’

Chapter 6

The next day I’m light-headed, dizzy as I get ready for work. I’ve had a restless night. Every time I fell towards sleep, my body jerked me awake, flinching back from that form on the sofa: that relentless image. I finally fell into unconsciousness at about five and when my alarm rang, two hours later, I dreamed it was the police calling me. They were placing me under arrest.