After she’d smacked me for nagging, she stormed over to Mrs Johnson and told her off for offering me Sixpence without speaking to her first. I heard her tell Dad that Mrs Johnson was determined to put a rift between me and my mum, but Dad said he thought she was just being kind. This infuriated Mum, who yelled at him that he always took everyone else’s side and never hers, and it started one of their bad arguments, where she threatened to go back to Grandma. She stomped out of the house, which happened quite a bit when they had a fight. She would march away and say she was never coming back, and we would huddle together on my bed and I would comfort the little ones.

After a while, depending on how cross Dad was, he would sigh and look for his keys and go driving to find her. She always agreed to get in the car and return home, but sometimes they wouldn’t speak to each other for a day or more. After this particular fight, I was banned from visiting Mrs Johnson for two weeks, which felt like a lifetime, and also unfair because I was just reporting the offer. I picked the sores in my head often during that time. Mum said this was to make her angry, but it wasn’t. Like I said, I don’t always know I’m doing it.

Dad came and sat on my bed one night, which was always special because he didn’t do it much. He said that I had to understand a guinea pig might make Caleb sick, and he was sure I wouldn’t want that, but that if I really pulled my socks up in the Sunday school exams and at school, and didn’t cause Mum too much grief or pick my head, he would think about making me a hutch for Sixpence over the Christmas school holidays. I shrieked with happiness and gave him loads and loads of baby kisses all over this face, but he pushed me back into the bed and reminded me of all the things that would have to happen first, and that he was making no promises. He suggested that I only talked to him about the guinea pig, because Mum would worry about Caleb. I understood, and I agreed.

When he left the room, Ruthy, who shared the room with me, sat up and spoke into my happy darkness.

‘It won’t happen, Dorcas. There’s no way you will behave until Sunday this week, never mind until Christmas. And there’s no way Mum will agree to having an animal in the garden. And if she did, there’s no way Caleb wouldn’t have another asthma attack if he touched it. He gets sick every time he plays with animals. Dad was just being kind so you will stop picking your head.’

I jumped out of bed and dragged her out of hers over to the stain in the carpet we called ‘the wee patch’. The big brown stain on the carpet was there when we moved to Fisher Street, and Ruthy was the one who imagined that three dirty boys had lived in the room before us and had urinated a little bit each into the centre of the room every night like puppies marking their territory. Caleb and I believed her story instantly and always jumped over the stain. The thought of touching it even in our shoes would cause terror. I pushed Ruthy over and rubbed her cheek into the patch. She let out a long piercing scream that resulted in Mum racing in to see what had happened.