And I said, ‘No, that’s my mummy. Her name is Pippa.’ I know that because Daddy told me her name, and he said I must never forget her. Ever. So I don’t.

But then Aunt Verity cried. Big fat bubbly tears rolling down her face.

‘It is you,’ I said, because I don’t like it when she cries. ‘I love you.’ I said that too, because I do.

And she pinned the picture to the cupboard. ‘I love you too, Tiger,’ she said.

‘Tiger,’ she calls again from downstairs. ‘It’s time for tea.’ I smile and think of my very favourite book The Tiger Who Came to Tea, which Aunt Verity bought me when I became five years old.

I’m not that hungry right now, and want to play with my red bus. It’s got one, two, three, four yellow wheels. I know all of my numbers, and Aunt Verity says I am very clever. She says I am a brilliant artist too – just like her. She paints all the time. She likes painting pictures of Daddy.

‘It’s hereditary,’ she said about me being an artist. At least I think that’s what she said. I don’t know what that means, but I think it’s good because she was smiling.

I jump up when she calls me again. My arms out like an aeroplane, I whiz and whirr and whoop from my bedroom and down the stairs, ‘One, two, three, four, five, six, six, eight, twelve … what’s for tea?’ I say, running into the kitchen.

Aunt Verity has made me baked beans on toasty soldiers. I jump onto the chair at the table. Pick up my knife and fork. I like toasty soldiers. Aunt Verity has cheese on hers. I don’t like cheese. It makes my tummy feel sick.

While we eat she tells me about my grandpa – her daddy, my daddy’s daddy. ‘He’s dead now,’ she says, as I munch – dead means he’s not here anymore so I can’t see him or talk to him – ‘but when he was alive he was on TV. His name was Felix Flynn and he did magic tricks. He had puppets too and he could make them talk.’ She tells me this story a lot.

I like my grandpa’s puppets, and, even though he’s dead, his puppets talk to me.

‘Grandpa used to get cross with your daddy,’ Aunt Verity says. This is always when her voice goes sad and crackly. ‘And one time he hit your daddy so hard he broke his arm. That’s why we have to look after your daddy.’

I want to hug my daddy all of the time, because he’s sad all of the time, and it makes me sad that his arm got broke. But Aunt Verity says he doesn’t want to see me too much.