‘Mum,’ I said as I closed the kitchen door behind me.

She tipped a fag out of the box and clutched it between her yellow fingers. I waited for her to ask me how my first day at school had gone, but she simply lit her cigarette and continued staring out of the window.

‘What’re you looking at?’ I asked, coming up to stand beside her.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

I remained there for a little while, next to her, breathing in the cigarette smoke and trying to ignore her overpowering perfumed scent. It was warm in the little kitchen and I pushed up my sleeves, laying my arms on the cool of the worktop. I waited for her to comment on the scars that criss-crossed my arms and wrists, but she said nothing.

‘Mum, can I ask you about my dad?’ I held my breath; I’d never asked her anything like that before.

She uttered a laugh as she crushed out the cigarette in the sink. ‘Nope,’ she said as she pushed herself upright and stretched. ‘Will you put some dinner on while I have a bath?’

Without waiting for a reply, she slouched away, her heavy tread on the stairs signalling the end of that particular conversation.

There was a girl at my new school who was living an even worse life than me. Her name was Rebecca Lavery, and she was dirty and smelly and thin as a rake. I wasn’t any of those things because I’d learned how to use the washing machine when I was seven, and the iron and the shower, and I’d been cooking for myself and my mother since I was eight. I took comfort in the fact that Rebecca’s sorry state of affairs was briefly more interesting to the other kids than the fact that my mother was a prostitute and a drug addict. I got a reprieve, for a short amount of time.

One day, I was sitting outside the nurse’s office after having an accident with a scalpel in the art class. I’d given up cutting myself for sympathy, attention and physical comfort. Turns out when you’re no longer tiny and cute, the teachers and nurses don’t give a free hug with every incident that involves a bandage or a plaster. I still cut myself, though, because along with the blood came a feeling of release and relief. It was short-lived, and I tried not to do it often, but the sight of the sharp blade and the anticipation of that blessed emotion had been too tempting that day.

The nurse told me I looked pale as she deftly and efficiently patched me up, and I was to sit in the outer office until she was sure I wasn’t going to pass out. I waited for her to comment on the faded scars that adorned my arms, but she said nothing.