‘Your poor mother,’ said Mrs Jackson. ‘Look what he has done to her.’

The cafe was on the high street between home and Mamma’s work. Dad liked to sit outside and read his paper there. Sometimes Matty would go too.

Today a pair of old Greek men were at one of the tables, playing cards. One of them was smoking a cigar. Matty sat down at the empty table next to them – it had a wobble, the pavement not quite straight – and watched the people walk past. Where did you go when you died? Didn’t everyone turn into angels, unless they’d been really bad? Maybe only the best ones became angels and helped people, and the rest turned into ghosts and just hung around, waiting for people to get their Ouija boards out. Did they walk around in the street, in between all the normal people? Matty tried to look harder, deeper, into the air, past the two teenage girls blowing Hubba Bubba bubbles, past the man with the briefcase and the lady with the pram, until both eyes hurt.

‘Hello, sweetheart.’ The waitress with the dirty-blond hair was there. A tiny heart-flutter. ‘Where’s your dad? Not seen him in a few days.’ Her voice was always the same, rough and croaky, as if she had a cold. An accent that was maybe Turkish or Greek.

‘Um,’ said Matty. ‘How long ago? Exactly?’

‘Oh,’ she said, surprised. She had a thick, low fringe and bright pink eyeshadow all the way up to her eyebrows. ‘I dunno. Not for a while, that’s all. You just miss me, then?’

Matty looked at the menu, cheeks going hot. ‘Just waiting for my mum.’

‘Ahh,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you two ticks.’

‘What have you been doing this morning?’

Something had changed in Mamma. After work yesterday, she’d been nicer, the heel of her hand briefly resting on the back of Matty’s head, but later she had been swearing, loudly, in the kitchen, and went all loud and quiet again on the phone to Italy. The broken bits of the Barnet mug were still in the bin. Now she was sitting opposite at the cafe on her continued hunger strike, drinking black coffee and watching Matty devour scrambled eggs and beans on toast.

‘Nothing.’

‘Perhaps you should be preparing for school. Reading some books.’ She touched the side of her mouth with her little finger and looked at it. She had put on more lipstick, the colour of Superman’s cape. Some of it was in tiny lines around the edge of her coffee cup.

Inside the cafe, the nice croaky waitress was leaning both elbows on the counter, talking to a man with a red and black leather jacket like Michael Jackson in ‘Thriller’, and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She was so pretty.