‘Mum’s gone away,’ I say. ‘She’s gone to Myanmar.’

Elsa clings on to me and her yells become little hiccups, and then they stop altogether. She feels so heavy in my arms.

I carry her into the front room, find the phone and ring Grandad. He answers on the fifth ring.

‘Hello!’ he says, all jolly like he’s been drinking his home brew.

‘Grandad, it’s me.’

‘Meg! Are you all right?’

Then, even though I know it’s stupid, I say what I always say to Grandad when I need his help with something.

‘Houston, we have a problem.’

TEN

At first Grandad doesn’t believe me, at least not the bit about the plane and Myanmar. He makes me tell him exactly what Mum said, and I even have to describe the sounds I heard in the background.

Then he laughs. ‘Blimey. Alice is a free spirit.’

There are a few words going round my head at the moment to describe Mum, but ‘free spirit’ isn’t one of them.

‘Well, you’d better pack up your stuff and come round here.’

‘Where would we sleep?’ I say. ‘Your house is tiny.’

‘I could squeeze you in. If I shift the hamsters over, you can both go into the spare room. It’ll be just like the old days!’

Is he mad? Me, Elsa and twenty-three hamsters?

How will I sleep with all their wheels going round? How will I ever get any work done?

And just like that, I see my chance of going to Houston drifting away from me.

When I was little and Mum went off to rallies or festivals, Grandad’s spare room was my second bedroom. Then the hamsters appeared. Grandad wanted to see if he could generate electricity by connecting their wheels to a generator. Turns out he could, but his hamster farm didn’t just generate electricity, it also generated loads more hamsters. You’d think that a man with a physics PhD would understand the basics of reproduction.

‘Do you know what, Grandad? I don’t think there’ll be room for us in the spare room, not with all Elsa’s stuff.’

‘The hamsters could go into the lounge.’

‘What about your home brewery?’ Grandad’s also got quite an elaborate micro-brewery set up in the lounge.

Grandad laughs. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Look, I can find room for you somewhere.’

Suddenly, I see that there’s an obvious solution to the problem. I’m not sure Mum would like it, but right now I don’t really care about that. ‘How about Elsa and I stay here, Grandad?’

The line goes quiet for a moment. ‘I suppose that could work. I could come and stay with you and just pop home sometimes to check the animals and my beer.’

That’s not what I meant. I get why Grandad wants to come round here, but if he does, I’ll just end up looking after him and Elsa. The flat would just become an extension of his house: taps will be left running, plates will pile up in the sink ‘for later’, books and newspapers will be scattered all over the floor … It will be like living with Mum, but with added nicotine!