My socks slide down inside my shoes. Bag bounces painfully against my hip. I’m running full-pelt up the hill that separates school from home, and I’m not even trying to avoid the splats of gray chewing gum on the pavement. If I can just get back, I might be able to snatch ten minutes with Mum before he arrives. Ten minutes is better than nothing.

After the mammoth hill, the stairs in our tower block almost kill me—the lift’s clapped out again. I duck under the line of washing that Joan from 310 always strings across the corridor, damp sleeves flapping in my face, and vault over a skateboard left at the bottom of the last flight of stairs. Then I burst into our flat, hoping he’s not early.

“Mum?” I dump my bag, throw my coat in the direction of the pegs, rush through to the kitchen. She’s standing at the window, staring out at our grotty view, the mottled window giving an impression of permanent drizzle. Or maybe she’s not really looking at anything. She seems to do a lot of gazing into space lately. My cousin Becca reckons it’s because she’s in love, all moony and dreamy, but to me she looks lost in worries. Becca says I just don’t want to admit she’s been swept off her feet by a toyboy from the floor below.

Mum turns and I’m so relieved by the way she smiles at me, pleased to see me, that I run to her and hug her hard. She feels thin beneath her post office uniform. Is she losing weight to impress her boyfriend? The word lovesick snakes into my mind. It’s so weird to think of her like that.

I go to fill the kettle. I always make the tea when I get home from school, and we have one chocolate biscuit each, sitting in the same places at the kitchen table—Mum at the end nearest the door and me to her right, where the storage heater chugs out its hint of warmth. That’s the ritual. I hope we’ve got time to do it before Toyboy arrives. The kettle’s so slow. I press my fingers against the sharp chips in the rim of the sugar bowl and feel steam kissing my nose.

At last we’re sitting at the table, biscuit tin between us, Mum with her slim fingers wrapped around her mug and her dark hair tumbling over one shoulder. And I can’t think of a thing to say. In the past this wouldn’t have bothered me: I’d slurp my tea and drift into a daydream. But now I’ve got to make this daily ten minutes count for more than the whole evenings she spends with him.

“How was school, love?” she asks, seeming to break out of a trance.