I went to the cupboard underneath the stairs and pressed the button on the electricity meter. It blinked at me – zero. They no longer gave our home emergency credit; we’d used up that favour a long time ago.

Back in the living room, I picked up Carl’s wallet from the coffee table. I looked at him as he lolled on the sofa, one arm thrown behind his head. A bubble of spit floated on his lips as he slept.

I took his wallet to the kitchen, and by the light of a torch I emptied it of its contents.

Business cards, credit cards, scrawled paper with phone numbers, a list of names with figures beside them. People who owed him money, I reckoned, and with a snarl – emotion that I rarely showed – I ripped it up and pushed the bits of paper down the plughole in the sink. A single bank card remained. I pulled it out, saw my mother’s initials and surname embossed at the bottom.

I shoved the card in my pocket and was about to put everything back when I saw there was something else in the wallet. Behind a clear flap, there was a photo. I brought it closer to the torch and inspected it, realising with a jolt that it was my mother. It was years old; she was young and fresh-faced and happy, a dimple in her left cheek as she smiled for the camera. A dimple I never even knew she had.

Behind it was another photo, this one folded, and I plucked it out and opened it up. I heard a whoosh of noise, a thin breath – more of an exhalation really – and spun around to see who it was, dropping the photo so it landed face down on the floor. I clapped my hand over my mouth. The noise had come from me. In the living room, the two of them slept soundly on.

I knelt down, picked up the picture between my thumb and forefinger. It was a photo of me. It was also old; in it, I must have been around seven or eight. I recognised my bed, the pink flowery duvet cover that I still had now. I recognised the nightie that I used to wear, white with a yellow lace trim. I was sleeping, just as deeply as they were now next door. My nightie was pulled up to my neck, exposing parts of me that were never meant to be photographed at that age.

I had no knowledge, no memory of that picture being taken.

On the kitchen floor, I wept. Hot tears coursed down my face as sadness swirled inside for the little girl in the photo. I turned the torch off and went to bed, pushing my chair under the door handle so it couldn’t be opened from the outside.

‘You got something of mine, missy?’