Teddy danced while I sang. I laughed, but quietly, so as not to disturb Mama. Mama didn’t like it if I made any noise once I was in bed. I couldn’t tell the time, but sometimes when Mama put me to bed it was still light outside and it would take me ages to get to sleep. But I didn’t mind, as long as I had Teddy. Teddy was a good friend to me. My only friend really.

Eventually I fell asleep, but Mama wasn’t in bed. And when I woke up in the morning, she still wasn’t there.

I took Teddy and got up. ‘Mama?’ I called. ‘Mama?’ She wasn’t in the living room. Most nights she came to sleep in our room but sometimes she would fall asleep with the TV on and I would find her in the morning on the sofa. But the TV was all black and she wasn’t there.

‘Mama? Mama?’ Normally I was awake first, but sometimes, hardly ever, Mama was already in the kitchen having breakfast when I woke up. But today she wasn’t in there either.

Never mind. I was a big girl and I could make my own breakfast. I’d done it before. Sometimes Mama was too tired or too sad to get out of bed and I would look after myself all day. That was what big girls like me did.

The cereal I had thrown the day before was still on the ground. The Weetabix packet was still on the table, so I climbed on the chair to get it. I got a bowl from the cupboard – I couldn’t use my favourite one as it was still on the floor, and I chose a spoon from the drawer – my best one with the picture of a princess on the end. Then I got the milk out of the fridge and sniffed it like I’d seen Mama doing. I poured it into the bowl and sprinkled on some sugar.

The Weetabix tasted nice. Once I had finished I moved my chair so I could stand on it and washed the bowl under the tap like Mama did when the sink would get so full that nothing else would fit. There were lots of other things in the sink already and it smelt funny, but I didn’t try to wash any of the other things. There were knives, and I wasn’t allowed to touch knives. They were sharp and could hurt me, Mama would say. Sometimes she would show me the cuts on her arms which were from knives. She said she was showing me so that I would know how dangerous knives are, but I didn’t like it when she did that and I would say no, no, no I don’t want to look.