‘OK, OK, I think it’s time we left Wolfie alone and it’s definitely your bedtime, George.’ The calm doctor-slash-parent is back in the room, but when he finally shovels George out, just before he shuts the door, Dom turns back around.

‘What I meant was, just don’t be too hard on Danny, that’s all.’

And then I’m alone in that big bedroom that smells like hot chocolate and clean sheets and George’s soapy skin, thinking that’s the exact same thing I said to Danny, about Lou.

It’s not like I’m lying there wide awake under about a thousand togs of luxury duvet listening out for my uncle to come home.

I am, though.

I finally hear the front door open and close quietly and I think, Well, maybe the guy isn’t completely smashed, but then there’s a dull thump like he’s just bounced off a wall. To be fair, the house is so quiet I could probably hear him stub a toe. At our place there’s always something going on, like neighbours fighting, other people’s tellies blaring, cars backfiring, cats squawking. Sometimes all of it at once. But Dom’s house is as polite as he is.

I hear some far-off clinks from the kitchen then the sound of the back door closing, and suddenly I want to see him. I shimmy to the end of the bed, which I already know gives me a perfect view over to the shed. When the light comes on, I duck down before I realise he’s probably drunk, it’s very dark, and as if he’ll be looking.

I watch my uncle’s shadow as he moves around the shed, then it drops low and disappears. I picture him sitting on his bed, falling asleep into a plate of cold pesto pasta and planning ways to avoid us. After a few minutes of no more action, I give up and lie back down to wait for sleep, but the light from the shed is throwing a mottled pattern on the wall that I can’t stop looking at. I drag the covers over my head and feel a tiny flutter behind my ribcage. I think about Dom and George and his mother and the empty spaces in this massive house. I think about a woman who likes to live in small places and a man who sleeps in a shed. And then, in the dark, I close my eyes and like I do, like I always do, I take a deep breath in. The deepest.

From my gut, from the bottom of my feet. I count.

Five, six, seven.

Hands press down. Flat, dead weight on my chest.

Hold it in.

Take it easy, you. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

Wings. Slow, beating. Pushing wind around my face.

Twenty-six, twenty-seven. Forty. Keep them closed.

Don’t breathe.

The only way out is through. Fifty.

Steel around my chest, twisting, tightening. Pulse shredding my skin.

Seventy-three. Seventy-four.

The pain is blue.

Quid pro quo, chica.

16

Wolfie

Most of the times Lou’s talked to someone, it’s been my idea. We’ve seen a couple of psychologists, a counsellor, a psychotherapist, a kinesiologist, a Bowen therapist, a hypnotherapist and, I kid you not, a shaman. The guy was a doozy and I don’t think any of us are going to forget that day in a hurry.