‘But I’m not like Mum at all, Dad. She is very well put together and always does the right thing and I am always messy and do the wrong thing.’

Dad laughed.

‘Well, your mum has been telling me more about her life in Scotland growing up, and she was always getting into trouble. It’s one of the reasons she got on the boat to come out here. She was always fighting with your grandma, and they both thought coming to live with her uncle out here would give her a good start and a bit of space.’

There was a lot of new information here, but the bit that stuck in my mind was the bit about punishing one person.

‘Do you think she will ever love me again, Dad?’ I asked.

‘She never stopped loving you, Dorcas. But you can love people and hurt them at the same time, and that’s what I’ve done to your mother without meaning to. We will always hurt about Caleb, but I’m hoping one day soon we can stop hurting each other. And then we’ll have a new string on a tree with all the beads in a row instead of going up and down, and that will mean we are all equal – just different.’

I jumped back from him and just stared at his face. How did he know about the Wilson family string? I couldn’t even ask him about it, I was so surprised.

After Dad left, Ruthy and Daniel came in to see me. They seemed very chirpy for some reason, and I hoped it was about me being able to have lunch with them on Christmas Day, but I was too scared to say anything in case I broke a good spell.

I asked Ruthy if she had told Dad about the Wilson string, but she said no, and Daniel asked us to explain what it meant. He was very impressed by the idea, although he looked a bit sad when we told him where his bead had landed. He said Dad always noticed things we thought he didn’t, and that seemed to cheer him up a bit. We all agreed we didn’t know what would happen next, but Daniel said Dad was back in charge of family things and would make it okay when he could.

Mr Driver had gone to the bakery while we were talking and bought us all a Kitchener bun to have after our sandwich, which was very kind of him, and made me think of Maynard who always shared his with me. One very good thing in the middle of the horribleness was that I knew I had a good friend forever in Maynard.

Daniel and Ruthy went back to our house. Mr Driver invited me into his shed and I helped him paint the wooden beams that held it up. He let me choose the paint colour from his set of sample tins, which he’d salvaged after the fire damage, and I painted the bottom while he painted the higher up bits that went to the roof. He said he approved of my choices, and it would never have occurred to him to paint every beam a different colour, but he liked it and said his favourites were purple, yellow and green. I liked the blue one, the red one and the pink one, and, if I’m honest, even the orange one in the middle.