‘Cry? Oh, God. Don’t do that. I don’t do crying.’ She pulls the lid off the pen. ‘I guess whatever it is, it’s bad.’

I nod. ‘I’ll tell you if you like.’ I don’t think I can keep quiet about this any longer, and Annie has this strength about her. Maybe she can make it better.

‘OK, but only if it’s got nothing to do with boys, kissing, or girls being mean.’

I shake my head. ‘It’s to do with my mum … and an earthquake.’

Her eyes go wide and she puts down her pen. ‘Hot damn,’ she whispers.

FORTY-SIX

I tell Annie everything, about Mum leaving, how they’re getting suspicious at Elsa’s nursery … I even tell her about the competition on Saturday, although I feel like I shouldn’t be worrying about that now.

Annie describes my situation as ‘bleak, but not without hope’, then she writes me a note to get me out of school.

It works, and I spend the afternoon with Grandad, checking our phones, watching the news and trawling the internet for information on the earthquake. Grandad rings the embassy, but they say they’ll have no information for forty-eight hours. They take Mum’s details, though, and when I hear Grandad describing her two tattoos, I have to hug Pongo to me really tight. In the end, Grandad resorts to his homebrew to ‘take the edge off things’, and soon he’s lying flat on the sofa, snoring. He’d planned to come and get Elsa with me, but I can’t bring myself to wake him up – I’m pretty sure he won’t get much sleep tonight – so instead I write Gone to get Elsa. Come round for dinner on a Post-it note and stick it on his chest.

After I’ve handed over twenty pounds for the lunches, Dawn gives me Elsa. It’s like a trade-off. ‘Remind your mum to come in tomorrow,’ she says as we set off for home.

‘I will,’ I say, hoping with everything inside me that Mum will be waiting for us at home.

She isn’t. The flat is quiet and empty. I put Elsa down and drop our stuff by the door. Pongo bumps his head against my hand. He needs feeding and so does Elsa, but I just stand there, staring down the dark corridor feeling heavy inside. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so close to giving up before.

Then Elsa pulls herself up my legs and stands there wobbling.

‘Hungry?’ I say. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got left.’

I’m feeding Elsa scrambled eggs when I see the message Ed’s sent me on Facebook:

Where did you go this afternoon? I looked for you.

I know you’ll only want facts, so I’ve found some out for you:

1)The epicentre of the earthquake was in the north of the Myanmar and missed the majority of the tourist areas.

2)Even small earthquakes can disrupt all mobile phone and landline activity. It’s likely that your Mum has no way of contacting you.