I’m squirming now. I don’t like it when she talks about my dad—or lack of—at the best of times. Now she’s using the word relationship, sinking my hopes that Toyboy Nick’s a temporary blip in our lives. I wrestle a bobble around the thick ponytail and catch her reflected gaze.

“Will you make an effort to be nice?” she asks. “For me?”

“I am making an effort.”

“More of one? I really need you to get along.” She smiles into the mirror, the crack bisecting her face, but something in her eyes sends a shiver through my body. For a split second she doesn’t look like herself. The light skating off the mirror carves hollows into her pale cheeks.

She forces her smile a little wider. “You’re my two favorite people after all.”

My hand jerks and the ponytail collapses. So he’s level with me now in her heart. I feel like she’s thrown back her elbow into my stomach.

—

After she’s gone I drift around the flat, watching dark-winged birds gather on our tiny balcony, then flap away over the city. Becca phones and gives me the latest from that side of our small family, the Derby clan. She asks how things are with us, and I can’t even bring myself to tell her what Mum said about Nick. It’s lodged in my chest, like a pain I can’t quite shake, can’t quite understand.

When Mum gets home, easing off her shoes and massaging her blisters, she announces that Nick’s coming up and we’re going to have Chinese. Takeaway would normally be a highlight of the month, but I find myself acting all negative, asking if we can afford it and claiming to be on a diet. She says Nick’s treating us, and that I need to go on a diet about as much as Mrs. Chalmers from 307 needs more cats. I try to laugh, try to show some enthusiasm for the menu that Nick arrives brandishing.

“Have whatever you want, girls,” he keeps saying. “Spring rolls? Chips?” He’s got his wallet out, waving it around in his huge hand, though we haven’t actually phoned in the order yet. And even when he’s talking to me he stands close to Mum, like they’re invisibly handcuffed together. She looks small beside him. He makes suggestions about what she could order and she shrugs along with every one, as if making her own decisions is too much effort.