It was like having a restless ghost in the house, thought Irene. Sasha was a ghost by night, and by day Clem was a violent boy-girl who wore football boots to school and who got into trouble for kicking teachers, pushing mud and old chestnuts into the exhaust pipes of their cars, hitting her class mates and saying ‘shit’ loudly in assembly. Only Aggie was consistent: a toddler who had tantrums twice a day and sometimes lay on the floor of the supermarket, in the cereal aisle or by the organic fruit and vegetables, and barked like an injured seal while people steered a wide passage round her and looked at Irene with disapproval. Once she knocked a bottle of olive oil to the floor, where it shattered and spread in a viscous puddle. Irene had picked her up and run from the scene.

Adrian started to take the girls ‘home’, where Frankie watched football on Sky with Clem, let Sasha paint her fingernails and toenails and plait her hair, ordered giant takeaway pizzas for everyone. She kissed Aggie better when she fell over. She hugged them when they left. When they came back, Irene could smell her perfume on their skin. They talked about her to Irene, only Sasha occasionally uncomfortable about it. Irene set her face into a smile, nodding enthusiastically at everything, trying not to properly hear the words that slid in as clean as an army knife, but glassy-eyed with rage and fear.

Sasha made a cushion cover at school, with lines of cross stitch, chain stitch, running stitch, in different coloured thread. ‘Wow! Great,’ said Irene, holding out her hand. ‘It’s for Frankie,’ said Sasha, holding the cover to her chest and looking defiant. ‘It goes with the colours in her room.’

‘Great,’ said Irene enthusiastically. ‘She’ll love it.’ She imagined hurling stones through the windows of Frankie’s flat, throwing boiling water over her manicured hands, setting fire to the curtains in their bedroom, running her nails down Frankie’s perfect, creamy skin until little bubbles of red blood burst on it.

‘Frankie’s going to teach me how to wax my legs,’ Sasha said. She was threading bright-coloured beads onto elastic.

‘You’re eleven!’

‘Other girls do.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Now I know why Daddy left you,’ said Sasha. ‘You’re just a bossy-boots with wrinkly skin. I wish I was living with Daddy and Frankie. Also, did you know that when you bite your nails like that it’s worse than licking a lavatory seat.’

Irene stared at her, words boiling up inside her until she thought she would explode. Sasha gazed calmly into the mirror, furrowing her brow. She poked her index finger into a little pot of lip balm and dabbed it on her small mouth.

‘There,’ she said and daintily smacked her lips together.