Days later I found the clothes and toiletries dumped, still in their packaging, in the bin. She never wore the bras I bought her; as her breasts grew bigger she let them flop around beneath her grubby T-shirts. She began to smell. Though she never talked about school I knew she had no friends, and could only imagine how she must have appeared to the other children: the smelly kid. The school weirdo. I felt so sorry for her, but my pity was useless. She didn’t want it. Really, it was self-pity, I suppose, and it’s amazing how even that turns to nothing after a while: even the hardest things become acceptable, just another part of life.

Her bedroom door remained firmly closed. I would stand outside it and listen sometimes while she played her computer games, the sounds of simulated death and destruction seeping between the cracks, before I’d creep away and leave her to it, turning up the television or closing the kitchen door. I told myself that at least she was safe, and happy, in her own way.

It was less than a year later when everything changed. I don’t know how long she’d been sneaking out at night before I realized what she was up to. It was three in the morning and I was in the kitchen getting a glass of water when she came creeping in through the front door. I screamed, seeing her so suddenly, so shockingly, in the dark hallway. ‘Hannah,’ I said, once my heart had calmed, ‘what the hell are you doing? Where have you been?’

She shrugged. ‘Nowhere.’

I stepped towards her, wincing at the pungent smell of cigarette smoke. ‘Where have you been?’ I demanded. ‘Who have you been with?’

As I spoke, Doug appeared at the top of the stairs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. ‘What’s going on?’

Hannah shrugged, a sly smile on her face. ‘Nothing. Just went out. What’s wrong with that?’

‘You’re only fourteen!’ I said. She took her coat off and threw it over the banister, stumbling as she did so. It was then that I realized she was drunk. We stared after her with open-mouthed astonishment as she climbed the stairs, pushing past her father as she did so. A moment later we heard her bedroom door slam shut, and Doug and I stood staring back at each other in dismay.

No matter how much Doug and I threatened, begged and cajoled over the following weeks, Hannah continued to make her midnight escapes. We tried everything: took away her allowance, put extra locks on the door, we even hid her shoes – but nothing worked. She must have been getting money from somewhere, because she continued to come back smelling of alcohol and I often found boxes of cigarettes in her coat.