‘Told you you’re the best grown-up I know,’ she said.

‘You’re the best grown-up I know, too,’ Patrick agreed, quietly, squeezing my knee.

Dad reached for the water jug. ‘I’ll talk to her,’ he said.

We left not long after.

35

Patrick’s voice roused me from a sleep so deep it was like coming around from a coma.

‘Annie,’ he muttered through the darkness of the room. ‘Annie, can you hear that?’

Kezza had told me that jet lag can take weeks to leave your system, and apparently she was right. It was like being shouted at down the length of a blacked-out cave.

‘Annie.’

I reluctantly rolled over so my face was towards his.

‘I’m awake,’ I said, groggily, reaching out to feel him. It was pitch-black, so must have been about 3 a.m., and wind blustered outside, making me feel cold even under the warmth of the padded duvet.

‘Listen,’ he replied.

I didn’t hear anything. And then there was a loud bang from downstairs. It immediately made me two hundred per cent more alert.

‘Burglar?’ I asked, quietly. I reached out for my phone, but it wasn’t upstairs with me. I hardly needed my iPhone in bed when I had Patrick. I could see it in my mind’s eye, downstairs in the bag I’d dropped in the hallway when he’d pushed me up against the wall after we got home, slipping an icy hand underneath my jumper and pawing at my bra ‘for warmth’. I loved how he wanted me, and how I wanted him. I adored closing the door on the world and being back in our own little bubble, where it was just us two.

The noise came again. If it was a burglar, it wasn’t a very masterful one.

‘I think it’s somebody at the door,’ Patrick said, and my instinct prickled, thinking it was Dad and there was something wrong with Freddie, or that it was Mum and there was something wrong with Dad.

‘Urgh,’ I grumbled, clambering out of bed into the cold, predawn, air. ‘Stay here,’ I insisted. ‘If it’s a burglar, I’ll scream and that’s your cue. No point both of us getting cold.’

I slid the dimmer switch of the lamp up so I could see just enough to let my eyes get used to being open. My slippers were by the door, and luckily so was my big fluffy dressing gown, which was a relief because I’d already got goose bumps. I headed downstairs, Carol at my heel, listening out for noises again. Then I heard it: somebody saying my name. A man, from the other side of the front door. Carol started to grumble, but she didn’t bark. Whoever was out there, she knew them. She cooed like a newborn baby.

‘Alexander?’ I asked, opening the door as rain spat against the windows at a hostile, angry angle. ‘What the hell?’