‘Nothing else bad is going to happen. Mum said.’

‘What if it already did?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A bad thing already did happen.’

‘When?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘You can tell me, you know. I won’t tell Mum.’

She smiled. ‘Yes you will, you’re such a goody-goody.’

‘Not.’

‘Are.’

For a moment, Daniel thought she was going to tell him. But instead she just handed him another sweet.

‘Tell me, then,’ he said.

She shook her head but said nothing.

‘Is it about your exams?’

‘Something happened and I sort of feel like it was my fault. Like I wanted it to happen.’

They chewed in silence for a moment.

‘Did you want it to happen?’ Daniel said.

‘No. Not at all.’

Daniel pulled at a loose thread on his pyjama top. ‘I thought it would be really nice being at the holiday house but it’s like everything’s going wrong, isn’t it? I wish we could go home tomorrow. Do you want to go home?’

She looked down. ‘No. I’d rather be here.’

‘Do you think Mummy and Daddy are going to get a divorce?’

Lucy stopped chewing. ‘What?’

‘A divorce. Like Ant, from Ant and Dec.’

‘No. What makes you say that?’

‘They’re being really weird with each other. They’re not going to get divorced, are they? Isaac in my class, his parents are divorced, and he says it’s all OK, but I can tell he’s sad about it.’

Lucy was silent for a moment, her face lit from below by the glow of the phone’s screen.

‘You shouldn’t worry about stuff like that, little bro. I’m sure they’ll figure it out.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

Daniel stood up and took a few steps towards the door but then stopped, turning back to his sister.

‘Please don’t tell Mum and Dad what I said about them having a divorce.’

‘OK. As long as you don’t tell them I was upset.’

‘Deal.’

She put the bag of sweets on her bedside table and lay back down on the pillow. ‘And thanks for the present.’

‘I’m glad you liked them.’ He smiled in the dark. ‘Night, then.’

‘Night, Daniel.’

He pulled the door closed and crept back across the corridor to his own bed, pulling the covers up to his neck and tucking his body into the sheet the way he always did, so no spiders or bugs could crawl underneath in the night. The noise from the grown-ups outside by the pool seemed to have died down, and all he could hear through his open window was the chirping of crickets, a wall of sound in the night outside with no edges, no beginning, no end.

Across the corridor in her own room, Lucy lay awake. Phone in one hand, the little blade in the other.

One month earlier

One month earlier

Her mum’s banging on the bedroom door.