It had taken a spiral fracture of the radius and ulna of her left arm, a broken clavicle and the loss of both her front teeth to do it, but a month ago she’d finally walked out on my father. For good, she’d said. I hadn’t believed her at first: we’d been here too many times before. I’d watched her curled up on her bed at the shelter sweating like an addict going through withdrawal as she fought her longing to call him, certain it was only a matter of time before she went back. But somehow, against all my expectation, she’d resisted the urge and stuck it out. After a week at the shelter, we’d moved into a small rented flat in the anonymous sprawl of Crawley, a grey, unlovely London overspill town thirty minutes from my school. She’d talked about getting a job. She’d promised me it’d be different this time. Stupidly, I’d dared to believe her.

And then that morning I got up to make breakfast and found she’d gone.

She’d broken down and called him while I was sleeping and he’d come and stolen her away from me like a thief in the night.

She’d left me behind, because she’d known I’d have stopped her, even if I’d had to tie her to a chair. She didn’t care I was in the middle of my exams, or that I was only sixteen and there was no money or food in the house. She was an addict. She couldn’t help herself.

My father answered the door with a swagger. ‘I knew you’d come crawling back,’ he said.

‘Where is she?’

‘Where she belongs.’

He turned and walked back into the house, so confident he had the upper hand he didn’t even bother to shut the door on me.

I found my mother in the kitchen, sitting at the table in her apron as if she’d never been away, stringing runner beans into a pink plastic bowl.

‘You promised,’ I said.

‘You don’t understand,’ she said, her eyes sliding towards my father. ‘He’s my husband. I love him. And he’s changed. It’s going to be different this time.’

‘You said that last time, when he broke your wrist. And the time before, when he broke your nose.’

‘Your dad’s stopped drinking now—’

‘And the time before that, when he broke my nose. And the time before that, and the time before that—’

‘Amelia—’

‘And the time before that, when we lost Gracie,’ I continued relentlessly.

She looked away.

‘He’s changed,’ she said again.

‘He hasn’t changed! He’s not capable of change! How many times does he have to break your bones for you to realise that? He’s only going to stop when he kills you!’

‘You heard her,’ my father said. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’