‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ Elliot asked, and Harri tried to conceal the fact he’d made her jump.

He’d turned to face her, and she found his sad eyes unsettling. He wasn’t angry, just broken. Children weren’t supposed to know such complete grief.

‘My mum said she’d always be with me, but she never answers when I talk to her,’ he revealed, and Harri’s heart broke for him. ‘Why would she tell me something that isn’t true?’

‘It is true,’ Harri replied.

‘Then why doesn’t she answer?’ he asked. ‘Or my dad. Have I done something wrong?’

The weight of his grief was almost too much for Harri to bear. She had no idea how he carried it on such small shoulders.

‘Some people think our loved ones talk to us all the time. We just don’t know how to listen,’ Harri suggested.

She recalled how the deaths of her own parents had affected her, and how she’d longed to have just one more conversation with them. She’d been grown when they’d passed, and could only imagine the confusion and frustration she would have felt as a child.

‘I’m listening very carefully,’ Elliot said. ‘I’m doing everything I can.’

He fell silent and the only sound was the ticking clock.

‘I miss them so much,’ he confessed at last. ‘Mum was sick, but Dad . . . well, he just left. Why would he do that? I thought he loved me. Why would he go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I still love them so much. Ben says my heart doesn’t know they’re gone and my brain won’t let me forget them. When I felt bad like this before, I could talk to them or hug them, smile together, but now they’re not here to make me feel better. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Where do I put all the love I have for them?’ His voice trembled, and Harri found herself on the verge of tears.

‘I’m so sorry, Elliot.’

She wished she could take his pain away, but she didn’t know how, so she did the next best thing and changed the subject in an attempt to take his mind off his loss.

‘Can you tell me about that poem in there?’ she asked, gesturing to the loo. ‘Is it new?’

‘He said you’d come asking questions,’ Elliot replied sadly, as though Harri had somehow let him down.

‘What are you doing?’ Cynthia Hughes asked, appearing behind Harri.

Harri became flustered. ‘I . . . we were just talking.’

‘Come on,’ Cynthia added. ‘You’ve done your business. It’s time to go. Move along.’

She chivvied Harri to the front door with a combination of come ons, tuts, and irritated sighs. Harri kept her eyes on Elliot, who moved to the doorway to watch her.

‘I just want to—’

‘Not interested,’ Cynthia cut her off. ‘Out with you.’

She gave a final nudge, and Harri backed over the threshold where she was rewarded with the front door swinging shut in her face.