Mum said, and this worried me the most, ‘Well I can fix it so you don’t have to deal with either of us if you like.’

Mum started to eat food. As I’ve already made clear, this was not usual for her at all. She made four pieces of toast for her breakfast with lots of butter and jam, when she usually only had one slice with nothing on it. She started to put sugar and milk in her tea and had a biscuit with each cuppa, which was unheard of. She made more puddings than usual, which of course was a good thing as far as I was concerned, but then she ate a lot of them too. When she made rice pudding, which was my absolute favourite, she put big dollops of cream on the top of hers and kept her eyes on Dad’s eyes as she did it. He watched, but he didn’t say a word, which I thought was quite wise of him.

Caleb couldn’t keep his mouth shut as usual though and said, ‘Mum, I thought you were watching your waistline?’

Mum said, ‘Well, it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?’

‘Why doesn’t it matter, Mum?’ Caleb asked.

Dad said, ‘Just eat your pudding, Caleb.’

Caleb didn’t go back to school for two weeks. He lost a lot of weight I wouldn’t have thought he had to lose and was always tired and breathless. His little grey trousers hung on him like an old man’s pants, and Mum had to make two new notches in his belt. When that didn’t work either, she tied a bit of rope through the loops and yanked them up to his bosoms so they wouldn’t drag on the ground. Most of the time he stayed in his pyjamas, so it didn’t matter too much.

I seemed to make Caleb nervous. Ruthy said he told her that I made Mum cross too much and it scared him. He also continued to be worried about Dad being sacrificed. He regularly woke up from nightmares, calling out for someone to take Dad off the cross. He told Ruthy he could see Dad nailed up on bits of old tree in a graveyard, and Dad kept talking to him and saying it would be okay but blood was coming out of him in all sorts of places and he knew he would be taken up to Our Heavenly Father.

Ruthy reminded him we didn’t believe you went to heaven when you died, you just got buried and got all mouldy in the ground until the bugs ate you, and that only Jesus had ascended to the right hand of God. This made Caleb much worse and he had to go on his breathing machine for quite a while. Mum asked him what had upset him, but he just looked at us through the clear plastic mask and didn’t say anything, which Ruthy and I agreed was lucky.

Dad worked later than usual most nights and didn’t come home for tellie and chocolate nights two Fridays in a row, which was very sad-making. He also wouldn’t let me go to the Sunday night meetings with him, which I think was the worst thing of all for me, because I couldn’t talk to him or mind his books or put paper markers in his hymn book or breathe in his nice smell. I think he was worried I would ask him questions or say things about what was happening and he didn’t want to have to answer me. When I did try to talk to him at home, he would make up a reason I had to go and do something else, or he had to do something else, and Ruthy said it was because I had a reputation for asking awkward questions.