She hadn’t known where to go after Patrick’s revelation had sunk in. Back to Elm House? The thought now filled her with fear. She’d briefly pictured Maureen, wondered whether she might be in danger. Every time she thought of her, all she could see was her trusting face. But how could Chloe go back there now? How could she eat at their table? Hold that plastic cutlery while Patrick watched on? His confession hadn’t just made a liar of him – perhaps that’s what was breaking Chloe’s heart.

She’d thought about going to see Park House, but what solace could Nan offer? If Chloe was really honest, what had she ever offered? Suddenly everything that Chloe thought she knew seemed different in this new light. Everything once solid now slipped through her fingers like sand.

And then there was Hollie. She’d dialled her number, not knowing what she was going to say. But she needed to reach out to the one real thing in her life. Her constant.

‘Do you remember when we were kids?’ Chloe says suddenly. ‘Those games we used to play? The ones where our real parents would come and find us.’

Hollie laughs a little from the other end of the phone. ‘I haven’t thought about that for a long time.’

‘We couldn’t believe that they’d done that, that they’d left us,’ Chloe says. ‘And so we made them into new people. We shifted the shapes around until they made a different picture. One where we could like ourselves better. You remember, don’t you?’

‘My mum and dad were always doctors. Do you remember that?’ Hollie says. ‘I used to say they were too busy saving lives to come and get me. I invented all sorts of dramas that kept them at work.’

‘We played that game for hours,’ Chloe says.

‘Months,’ Hollie reminds her.

‘Years.’

The two women fall silent down the handsets. In truth, their parents hadn’t left them in the foster home where they had met as children, and they knew that really. The reality was they were put there by people who knew that’s where they would be safer. Two girls the same age, they had drifted towards each other, and then clung to one another in all the storms that followed. A bond was forged, they were one another’s lifebuoys.

‘They say that when we sleep, our brains make dreams that fit what we want to believe. Did you know that, Hollie?’

‘It makes sense, I guess,’ she says.

‘But perhaps it’s not just when we’re asleep. When we were little, we had to write new stories in our heads, or make up games so that we could feel better, so that we didn’t believe we weren’t worth loving.’