It might have been getting cooler outside but it was warm in the kitchen. I pulled the blanket off my back and let it fall to the floor. The pain in my head was constant. Where was I going to live? Moving would have been like trying to collect fireflies in a jar with no lid right now – impossible. Surely Alexander would let me stay for a while, until I knew what to do next. Surely he wouldn’t be so cruel as to kick me out onto the street. I wanted somebody else to tell me what to do. But I also I wished I could be home alone. I wished Mum and Dad knew to take Freddie back to their house, ready to start back at school, so I could be miserable and lonely and uncertain in peace.

‘I like the smell of the Flash,’ I said, finally. ‘Don’t criticize my cleaning products.’

She looked up, throwing her hands up in the air. ‘I give up,’ she moaned, to no one. ‘I truly do. It’s like I’m a ghost nobody can hear. Honestly!’

The sound of the front door caused Freddie and Carol to lift their heads, simultaneously curious. The scent of Indian food wafted down the hall, and they both leapt up when they realized dinner had arrived.

‘Grub’s up!’ Dad trilled. Freddie made a noise, exciting the dog, and Dad blew a kiss over at her as he lifted the food onto the kitchen island. ‘Can’t mend a broken heart without some sustenance,’ he whispered to me, setting several bags down and leaning over to kiss my forehead. I forced a grin to communicate that I was grateful for him breaking up the tension. ‘Judy,’ he carried on. ‘Did you warm the plates?’

‘Thanks, Dad,’ I croaked, but I wouldn’t eat any of it. I could barely keep down water, or tea. Even the smell was making me queasy.

‘Give me half a second, Peter,’ Mum said, right as Dad accused me of not having brushed my teeth today.

‘I just got up,’ I said, wearily.

‘It’s already 5 p.m. …’

‘What’s your point?’ I asked.

I could see Mum furiously shaking her head from the other side of the kitchen, warning Dad not to push me too far. The way she did it made it obvious I was supposed to see, her way of acknowledging I was ‘in a mood’.

‘No, no point,’ Dad said, changing tack. ‘I was just saying, it’s 5 p.m.! Where does the time go!’

My mother nodded in approval at his seamless change of diplomacy.

‘The plates, Peter,’ she said to him, setting them down next to the forks she’d left out.

‘Did you get pickles?’ Freddie asked, pulling things out of the brown paper bags and discarding them on the counter. ‘I can’t find them.’