Doesn’t she remember the fun we all used to have together, before him? Creating our own cinema by turning off the living-room lights and heating up popcorn. Going to the library café for banana milkshakes when Mum and Auntie Rach had been paid.

“She said Auntie Rach might come up to fetch her,” I lie. “Don’t you want to be here when she comes?”

“I thought Becca was getting the train back.”

“Rach wants to see you.”

She fixes me with a searching look, then stares toward the window, two grooves etching the bridge of her nose.

Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go. You don’t want to, I can tell.

“Rach will just have to see me another time,” she says briskly. “Nick’s gone to a lot of trouble to arrange this.”

—

Becca and I try to hatch a plan. We consider involving Auntie Rach, maybe asking her to phone up and persuade Mum to stay at home, but Becca isn’t keen. She’s not getting on with her mum at the moment, she admits. They’re always butting heads these days, going through spells of arguing or not speaking (while Uncle Jack keeps well out of it), but I’m too stressed to ask her what it’s all about this time.

None of our plans seems fail-safe. Some are ridiculous. The one we keep coming back to is telling the police.

“All they’ll do is talk to your mum, though,” Becca says, in the worldly way that sometimes reassures me, sometimes drives me mad. “And if she won’t admit anything, there’s nothing more they can do.”

“They could arrest him!”

“It doesn’t work like that, Kay. And do you even know where the police station is?”

I stall. Of course not. I don’t know anything. I’m useless.

I stand up and look frantically around my room as if it might be hiding among my things. “We could phone 999?”

“That’s for emergencies.”

“This is an emergency! He could kill her!”

“Kate.” Becca leaps up and puts her arms around me, rocking and shushing, telling me it’ll be okay. I sob into her shoulder, wetting the thin fabric of her dress.

—

I barely sleep for the rest of the week. On Thursday Mum’s on an early shift, so she kisses me good-bye and goes off to work while I’m still in my pajamas and Becca’s still asleep. Nick left even earlier. The mornings feel lighter when he isn’t at the breakfast table. In the quiet that Mum leaves behind, I slip into her room.