Anna and Kai watched her, Kai eating a piece of toast and strawberry jam. Lottie was painstaking, anxious to get it right, her tongue caught between her teeth, her blonde hair tucked behind her ears. It had gone dark outside and Lottie was reflected in the curtain-less window, a skinny child with her mother’s delicate bone structure. When she’d finished the background she left it to dry while the two of them played a computer game. Anna expected her to forget all about it, but far from it; she went back to her artwork, picking it up and turning it both ways before setting it down and picking up the stencils.

‘What do you want to write?’ Anna asked.

‘I’m thinking about it.’

Lottie chewed her bottom lip and sat back, contemplating the space before making her first mark. She worked slowly, carefully lining up each letter, spacing them out. Once that was done she dipped her brush into a pot of grey-green paint and began to fill them in. I Love My Dad.

‘That’s sweet,’ Anna said. ‘You’ve got two dads, haven’t you? Is that for your real one?’

Lottie turned her china-blue eyes on her. ‘They’re both real. They’re just different sorts of dads.’

‘That’s a lovely way of putting it.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s for my birth dad. For his birthday.’ Then she wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t really think Nick would appreciate this sort of thing.’

She was an oddity, Anna decided. A typical only child, like Kai, precocious in a way that manifests in a greater articulacy than their peers. Thoughtful, too. She had a pensive face.

When Lottie had finished, Anna picked the piece of wood up and laid it carefully with the others on the shelf against the painted brick wall to dry.

‘Can you turn it round so Dad doesn’t see it?’ Lottie said, suddenly anxious.

‘Of course. You wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.’

She wondered what time Lottie’s father was intending to pick her up. It was gone six thirty, and she wanted to kick back with a glass of wine.

‘Mum!’

The shout startled them. Kai was standing by the kitchen sink, looking down at his feet where water was pooling under the units. Anna rushed over and pulled open the cupboards, but the pipes under the sink seemed fine. Something must have happened when she turned up the heating. The plumbing was at least fifty years old and she couldn’t afford to get it overhauled. When she moved there had been no one to ask about things like stopcocks and boilers because the previous owner had died. Unfortunately, because Ben had killed himself, his life insurance didn’t pay out.