‘Good boy,’ she said. She raised a finger in the air, turned slowly and pointed to the large sticker with the word ‘Fridge’ on it. She went towards it purposefully and opened the door. ‘I would like cheese.’

Jeremy grinned at his mother. The old lady was having a good day.

Maisie intercepted her: ‘Cheese gives you wind, Ma.’

‘Well, it’s a good thing I don’t give a shite about wind.’ Bridie laughed.

‘Ah, let her, Ma’sie. Go on, Grammy, you only live once.’

‘Ah, Jeremy loves me enough to let me pop off in peace.’ Bridie’s head was firmly stuck in the fridge as she rummaged around.

‘Jeremy is a teenage boy. He finds your noisy arse hilarious,’ Maisie remonstrated, as Jeremy grinned.

Bridie emerged from the fridge with a block of Cheddar. ‘Ah, cheese,’ she said, and Maisie watched her son’s grin widen. If there was one thing you could say about Jeremy Bean, it would be that he loved his grammy. ‘One thin slice. I’m cooking breakfast,’ Maisie said firmly, and Bridie nodded, unwrapped the cheese and sank her teeth into it.

It was the first day of a new year and the last day of the Christmas school holidays so Maisie had made a large fry-up to celebrate both. Jeremy and Bridie were both tucking into theirs when she opened twelve-year-old Valerie’s bedroom door to tell her to come and eat. Valerie was lying on her bed singing along, painfully loudly, to East 17’s ‘Stay Another Day’.

‘I’ve been shoutin’ “Breakfast!” at the top of me lungs for the past five minutes, Valerie Bean.’

‘I’m not hungry yet, Ma’sie,’ Valerie said.

‘Get your skinny arse into the kitchen before I murder ya. Not hungry yet? Where do you think you are, the bleedin’ Ritz?’

‘As if! Bleedin’ Holiday Inn is as far as we’d get.’

‘Don’t say “bleedin’” and move it,’ Maisie warned.

Valerie huffed as she got to her feet.

Valerie was a tween before anyone had put a name to it. She liked loud pop music, black clothes, her room and little else. When she had turned eleven she had packed away all her dolls and cuddly animals, and a few weeks later she’d handed them to a gypsy woman, who had called to the door begging for old clothes. She had kept just a small pink Care Bear that her daddy had given her on the one and only occasion he’d visited after the separation. She had hidden it in the bottom of her wardrobe in a shoebox with her unused diary and a piece of sticky rock presented to her by her best and only friend, Noleen Byrne, following a family holiday in Blackpool. Valerie had licked it, then announced that it tasted like shite and rewrapped it.