Dad made the car skid to a sudden stop, which made all three of us in the back seat gasp. Ruthy put her hands over her mouth, and Caleb covered his eyes. I couldn’t stop looking. This was a worse fight than usual.

‘Dad …’ I said, although I didn’t know what I was going to say next.

Dad turned and looked at me with a look I hadn’t seen on his face before. Then he reached over the back of the seat and hit me across the face. ‘Dorcas. For once. Will you shut up. Stop causing trouble. You will never have a guinea pig or a pet. It would make your brother sick. It will make your mother sick. Stop being so selfish. And. Just. Shut. Up!’

Mum was sobbing now. Caleb was sobbing too. Ruthy was crying with no noise coming out of her mouth but with her face all twisted up and her mouth opened and a long line of spittle from her lip to the collar of her blouse. I felt a sort of shock. I put my hand to the place where Dad had hit me and it felt hot and stinging, but not as bad as my heart did, which I thought might burst out of my chest in a huge explosion. My lungs didn’t seem to be working properly, and I was having trouble finding my breath.

Dad put on the indicator and pulled back out into the street, and we drove home with just crying noises filling up the car. And then Caleb started to wail.

‘Don’t be sacrificed, Dad,’ he said. ‘Don’t be sacrificed. I don’t want you to be nailed on a cross like Jesus. Mum, tell him not to be sacrificed.’

Ruthy tried to calm him down by patting his shoulder. ‘He won’t be sacrificed, Caleb,’ she said. ‘Mum doesn’t mean that, do you, Mum? She just means he works too hard for his boss, don’t you, Mum? Don’t cry, Caleb. She doesn’t mean that.’

Dad turned to look at Caleb and said, ‘Of course not, Caleb. Of course not. Don’t be silly now. Mum didn’t mean it, did you, Agnes?’

But Mum would neither affirm nor deny, as they said on cop shows on tellie, and Caleb started to scream and cry hysterically. And then he started to wheeze. And my mother sat like a statue in the front seat next to my dad.

CHAPTER 11

Caleb had asthma all through the night after the fight in the car. I could hear him coughing, and Mum’s voice trying to soothe him. She piled up pillows behind him so he could breathe better sitting up, rubbed Vicks VapoRub on his chest and thumped his back gently to try to get all the muck out of his lungs.

I sometimes wished I could invent a pump that we could put down his throat and into his lungs to hoover up all the bad stuff so he could breathe again. I once asked Dad why they didn’t invent such a thing. He said he didn’t know, but perhaps I would grow up to be an inventor and make one for all the asthmatics in the world, which seemed like a noble thing to do. I put it on my mental list of possible things to do as an adult.