‘Really? And what are you going to do about it?’ Maude clutched her book to her chest. ‘Are you going to tell on me?

This is my room and you can’t just come up here and mess with my things.’

‘I’m just—’

‘What’s this?’ Neither of them had heard Chris approach, and as he stepped off the ladder, Nell felt the childish urge to do exactly what Maude had accused her of, to tell on her, to get her into trouble.

‘She,’ said Maude, ‘is going through my stuff.’

‘I’m sure she’s not,’ said Chris.

‘She bloody is! She thinks I’ve nicked her stupid bloody phone.’

‘Hey.’

‘What?’ Maude turned on him. ‘What have I done now? She was going through my private things, she was searching my room—’

‘I thought Maude might have borrowed my phone – you know . . . I just came up to check and I wasn’t’ – she turned to Maude – ‘I wasn’t going through your stuff.’

‘You could have asked me.’ Maude’s tone was anguished, she was, Nell realised, close to tears. ‘You didn’t have to be such a bloody bitch about it.’

There was a moment when Nell could have broken the silence, could have apologised, taken Maude in her arms and hugged her and told her, that whatever it was that had gone wrong they could surely put it right, but she left it a fraction too late, and it was Chris who spoke first.

‘I think that’s enough, don’t you?’

‘It’s not—’

‘I said that’s enough, Maude. Now, do you have Nell’s phone?’

‘No.’

‘Because we are going to look for it.’

‘Fine.’ Maude sat on her bed, drawing her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees. ‘Go for it.’ She sat there in silence, simmering with rage as Chris and Nell quickly went through her belongings, opening and closing drawers, emptying her bag, bending down and checking underneath the beds. Nell losing all interest in actually retrieving the phone as she went.

It wasn’t there.

‘Right.’ Chris stood in the centre of the room, he looked very tall, very severe, and Maude on her bunk, much younger, sadder. ‘I think an apology is in order.’

Maude looked up at him. ‘What?’

‘You don’t speak to Nell like that, and you don’t use language like that.’

‘And what about me, where’s my apology?’

‘Chris . . .’ Nell started, but he ignored her, as he usually did at this point – Maude was, after all, his daughter, not hers. Nell wondered again how they’d got here, Chris as the voice of authority, and she little more than a spectator.

He waited for a moment or two, then shrugged, and walked towards the ladder. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, ‘but until Nell gets an apology, you’re grounded.’

‘Grounded how?’ said Maude. ‘Early bed and no supper? Big deal.’ But her bravado was wavering, surely her father could see that.