Marty started walking again. They walked the rest of the way in a thoughtful silence. Marty thinking how he was going to get his mum to the parents’ evening and Gracie thinking about how much she would miss these walks if she got into the dance school. Neither of them actually noticed anything until Marty opened the back door. His eyes tried to focus, but there was just a jumbled collage of stuff. He couldn’t make it make sense. He looked across at Gracie, and watched as she took in the bags of old clothes and chipped mugs and stacks of saucepans. The back room was filled.

“I’m sorry.” Marty’s eyes found his mum eventually, kneeling on the floor among the mess. “I can’t do it, I’m not strong enough, I need my things.”

Marty dropped his schoolbag and ran. He ran and ran, leaving Gracie looking at Marty’s mum weeping on the floor.

FOURTEEN

“I THOUGHT I’D find you here.”

Gracie had brought him some breakfast from her house. She held out the jam sandwich as Marty squinted in the morning light. The allotment shed had been cold overnight. Gracie set about making some tea in silence. She didn’t press Marty for any details.

“She cares more about stuff than me,” he said at last.

Gracie handed him his cup and sat down on an upturned bucket.

“Do you really think that?”

Marty’s eyes were red from crying.

“She promised.”

Gracie touched his arm. Tears in her own eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

Marty pulled his arm back.

“I used to think it was normal”—he let out a bitter little laugh—“when I was small. That everyone lived like that.”

Marty sniffed. His nose was running from having cried most of the night, and his head ached.

“It’s okay if you, you know … you don’t want to be friends—”

“Don’t be an idiot!” Gracie interrupted.

“Does she know you slept here?”

Marty shrugged.

“What is she going to do? Come and check?”

“She’ll have phoned your grandad?”

“She’ll be too busy dragging all that stuff back into the house. Once she gets like this, it’s like nothing else matters…”

The mugs were steaming in the morning cold.

“She can totally kid herself. You’d think it’d be impossible … but she can kid herself that she needs those things. She lies to herself so hard that she believes it…”

“Maybe she does?”

“But it’s so stupid!”

“Maybe we all lie to ourselves, kid ourselves that we need something or want something or can be something,” said Gracie quietly.

“But that’s different!”

“Is it?” She was searching his face now.

She shrugged.

“Believing things, forcing yourself to believe them, isn’t always a bad thing,” she offered.