‘About the psychic.’

‘What psychic?’

She exhales heavily and the sound makes a hissing noise in my ear. ‘The one I just told you about.’

‘I’m sorry, Mum. I wasn’t listening. I was …’

‘You’re not still worrying about the backlash after the appeal, are you? I told you, I’ve got that in hand. I was telling you about the email I received from a psychic. I’ve got it in my handbag. Shall I read it out to you?’

I hear the sound of a zip being pulled, then a clattering sound, presumably as she tips the contents of her bag over the floor or table. Mum’s predilection for filling her handbag with absolute crap is the last-gasp hoorah of a horrible hoarding habit that lasted until I hit my teens. When people ask me what my childhood was like I tell them that I shared it with my mum, dad, a dog, two cats and ‘the clutter’. According to Dad the first house they bought together was clean and tidy for all of an hour. And then Granddad turned up in his battered van and brought out box after box of Mum’s stuff. She moved everything in – her childhood toys, every book and magazine she’d ever been given, every drawing she’d done at school, dried-up make-up and empty toiletries bottles and a mountain of clothes. Mum’s family were poor and she inherited the ‘make do and mend’ mentality from her own mother but, unlike Gran who’d actually mend and use the things she wouldn’t part with, Mum kept everything; piling it all up in bin bags, filling the hall, the utility room and every available space in our bedrooms.

Mum and Dad argued a lot back then, about the mess, about the fact that Dad spent most nights down the pub. I was constantly afraid that my parents were going to split up. Now they seem happier than they’ve ever been. Maybe Dad got used to Mum’s messy ways, or maybe she made an effort to change, or perhaps they just learned how to rub along together. They’ve been together for forty-five years.

I press a hand to the side of my head. ‘Mum, I told you. No more stuff from psychics. Please.’

‘But it says here that she’s worked on some very high-profile cases with the police and they’ve helped retrieve the bodies of—’

‘Mum!’

‘They weren’t all dead, mind,’ she adds quickly. ‘She’s found runaways too. All she needs is something of Billy’s, something he—’

‘Wore or loved and touched frequently so she can tune in to his vibes. I know, Mum. We’ve heard it all before.’

She sighs. ‘But she’s provided a whole page-worth of testimonies from people she’s helped.’