Mummy catches her eye and smiles with a question in her eyes: Where did you go, pumpkin? But she just moves over to the crisp bowl, where she plunges in her hand and chooses a really big one from near the bottom. Then she lets out a whooping cry and starts to dance along to the music.

It takes a little while for people to notice what is happening. Dylan, being a bit overweight, doesn’t dance for long and quickly resumes his seat next to the crisps, where he carries on stuffing them down in handfuls.

At first, he just coughs and looks a bit uncomfortable in his seat, moving forwards and then scratching at his chest and neck, which have gone pink. His eyes go wide. Adults race over to him and he starts flapping his hands and making a breathing sound like there is something stuck in his throat. She watches in horrified fascination as her mum shouts, ‘Someone call 999!’ and runs into the kitchen, before quickly returning with a small plastic device in her hand. She had seen Dylan’s mother hand this over earlier but hadn’t seen where it had been kept.

Lottie grabs it out of her hand and her mum starts to object but Lottie is too busy jabbing the thing straight into her brother’s trousered leg in one quick movement. Within about ten seconds he begins to cry. Lottie is crying even harder. She clings to Dylan until the ambulance arrives.

Later, her mother will come into the kitchen and find the jar of peanut butter. It is a new jar, which came with the delivery the day before. The foil inner lid has been peeled back to reveal a shape that looks like three small fingers have been pushed into the smooth surface.

ELLIOTT

Anya drew her feet in their oversized fluffy socks closer to her body and snaked thin arms around her middle. I felt a strange distance from her. Normally, her looking this vulnerable would make me want to hold her.

But then, maybe I had never seen her like this before.

‘What do you mean?’ I said, and then, moronically, ‘Why haven’t you been to work?’ As if that was the most important thing right now. Maybe it was because the words she had uttered were too big to process.

Anya rubbed her nose with the heel of her hand, in a quick, hard movement, as though trying to erase her own face.

‘Didn’t you hear what I said?’

‘I heard you.’

I sank onto a low red sofa that was scuffed and saggy with use. Did I recognize it? I wasn’t sure. It looked like the one that used to be in Anya’s old bedroom. The question of why I never knew this flat existed felt like the least pressing one right now.