Freddie scowled and stomped her foot. ‘Don’t be mean to her,’ she implored, her soprano voice quivering right alongside her bottom lip. ‘It was HIM!’ She trembled, her little body unable to hold room for all of her feelings. I hated what Alexander had done to me, but I hated that Freddie had to do the complicated mental gymnastics of grown-up emotions even more. ‘He’s a … he’s a BASTARD!’

She dared to look our mother in the eye, to see if her outburst was going to get her into trouble. For a moment I wasn’t sure which way it would go, either. Nobody swears in front of Judy Wiig.

My mother stepped inside decisively and closed the door behind her.

‘I see,’ she settled on. Freddie and I held our breath as we waited on what she would say next. She rearranged her facial features into something approximating comfort. She wasn’t pleased.

‘Right. That’s very unfortunate. I assume your father has already put the kettle on?’

4

‘I spoke to Fernanda. Finally,’ Mum said as I crept towards the breakfast bar, a blanket from the sofa pulled around my head like an elaborate trailing veil. The irony of it.

She was pushing teabags around the pot and warming cups and commenting that I should switch to one per cent milk because you can’t tell the difference between that and semi-skimmed. This was exactly how it had been for the past three days: me, unwashed, sad, largely unable to communicate in full sentences, and my parents, staying even though I hadn’t asked them to, trying to keep busy, organizing things, shouting at people in lieu of being able to shout at the person they most wanted to: Alexander. In another world it might have been a sitcom setting that I’d offer up to Kezza’s production company. It could even be reality TV: Zero Days a Bride.

‘She’s as baffled as anyone, Annie – and mortified. I can understand that, really, because honest to God if the shoe was on the other foot and you’d skipped out with everyone there, I don’t think I could show my face again. I’d be devastated, owning a child who’d be so reckless.’

Freddie peered over at us from the sofa, muting the TV so she could listen in. What a boring, sad way for her to spend the last days of the summer holidays. I wandered over and ruffled her hair. She stood up, balancing on the cushions so we were eye to eye, and opened her arms.

‘I love you, Froogle,’ she said, and I kissed her smooth, soft cheek. As she pulled away to look at me – assess me, really – I stuck out the tip of my tongue. I was trying to be funny, but the way she cocked her head made me realize she felt sorry for me. My tiny baby sister pitied me.