All the furniture belongs to the landlord, so there’s a surprisingly small amount of stuff to pack up. Just clothes, toiletries and some crockery, cutlery and ornaments. While Catriona gets on with wrapping plates and mugs in sheets of old newspaper, Grace is in the hall playing with a couple of large cardboard boxes. Catriona has propped the door open so she can keep an eye on her while she works. She smiles as she listens to her sweet conversation. At the moment, Grace is pretending to be a cat. One of the boxes is her house, and the other box is her cat-sister’s house.

Hearing Grace talk about a sister – albeit a ‘cat’ sister – induces a mild panic in Catriona. The image of a woman with a pram flashes into her mind – the woman from the shopping centre. The child in the pram was obviously a sibling. Catriona needs to make herself think about something else. To block out all these unhelpful memories. But it’s hard when Grace keeps triggering them with her make-believe chatter. Catriona tells herself that’s all it is – make-believe. It’s nothing more sinister than that. If by some chance it is a real memory, well, she’s young enough for it to fade.

Catriona tries to think back to when she was a child and she’s pretty sure the earliest memory she has is of an incident at nursery, when one of the helpers told her off for getting paint on the floor. She must have been about four at the time. Grace isn’t even three. A sharp pain flashes across Catriona’s index finger. She glances down and twists her hand to see a thin red line along the side of her forefinger – a paper cut. She sucks the skin and goes over to the cupboard where she keeps the first-aid kit. She rinses her finger under the tap, pats it dry, then sticks a plaster on it. How can such a small cut be so painful? She sighs and returns to her task.

She finally left Darren’s family last week, after they made her promise to come back and spend Christmas with them. Catriona could tell they would rather have kept her and Grace in Middlesbrough. They really didn’t want to let them go. But Catriona said she had too much to organise. That she would see them in a few weeks’ time. She hates lying to Geoff and Pat, as they’re such lovely, warm people. She knows she’s lucky to have their support, but Grace comes first. She can no more keep Darren’s family in her life than she can go to the police station and confess everything. No. She and Grace must start afresh. A single mum and her daughter moving to a new place.