When they came to our flat, the kettle hadn’t even boiled before Dom suggested we come and stay, and he made it sound like the easiest, most sensible idea in the world. Like, why wouldn’t you take in a couple of strangers, just like that? And the weird thing is, the second he said it, the world went quiet. I mean, literally, all the noise in my head just fell away and it felt like I was coasting on a cloud. So when he confused paralysis for agreement, it was easier to go along with it. Because that feeling, that sudden loosening in my chest, that thought of having other people there, was like Christmas. Feliz Navidad!

It seemed like only about five minutes later there we all were, squashed into Dom’s car heading for Belsize Park. My uncle sat between George and me in the back, both hands on his knees like he was posing for a school photo, and out of the window I had a perfect view of Lou’s face in the side mirror. She didn’t seem angry or sad, which would have been understandable after a bulldozing like that; she just looked kind of neutral. Like she was queuing up at Departures. And I thought, I hope you’ve got a spare sofa somewhere in that big house, Dom.

George and Dom were doing all the talking, but I couldn’t do anything about it, because every time I thought of something to say I’d catch sight of Lou’s face in the mirror, or feel Danny shift his body to make sure his arm wasn’t touching mine – like I wouldn’t know – and I just dried up.

I’ve forgotten how small Lou is until I see her rattling around in Dom’s house, which is probably because we’ve always lived in small places. Cosy flats, a tiny cottage and once, when an upstairs neighbour’s bathroom flooded, even a postage stamp bedsit in Willesden Green for a month while our life dried out. We did an experiment on capacity and volume in science last term and apparently it’s all relative, the measure of the space taken up by something in relation to how much space is actually available to hold that something. I reckon that’s what Lou and I are like, shaping ourselves into all those small spaces, with all the small furniture we’ve collected along the way.

‘It’s how we like it,’ Lou once said, when I commented on the lack of stretch-out-ability for the two of us on our allegedly two-seater sofa. When I got older, I realised she’d never asked me if it was how I liked it, but by then it was too late to tell, because all I’d ever known was the feeling of wanting to have everything I own within arm’s reach. Including my mother.

The thing is, when I can’t see Lou – I mean when she’s not actually right in front of my face – I can’t do my mind reading. And if I don’t know what she’s thinking, sometimes I get fooled and then one morning there it is, subtle as a brick, slurping its Weetabix at our teeny tiny kitchen table. Taking up more room than the both of us put together. Because Lou’s baggage is about the only thing in any house we’ve lived in that isn’t small.