‘Why didn’t you tell me about this trip last week – what else are you hiding, James?’

Claire heard her father let out a sigh of frustration.

‘For God’s sake! Will you just—’

Claire put her Walkman headphones over her ears and turned up the volume to maximum. Like Paul, Claire was also lying on her bed, but she wasn’t thinking about him. She was just wishing her parents would shut the hell up. She remembered the first time she’d heard her parents arguing. She must have been about four years old. Her dad had put her to bed, read her a story, and then he’d gone downstairs. She was just about to fall asleep when she heard the shouting. She lay there listening, too terrified to sleep.

Over the years, it had followed a similar pattern. She didn’t really understand what her dad did for a living, just that he worked in retail and travelled a lot for business – at least once a month. She looked forward to when he was away, not because she wanted him out of the house but because during that time, there was no arguing. It was a trade-off though because in the lead-up to her father’s trips, the tension intensified. While Claire missed him, he usually came back with a present for her, especially when she was younger. They were small things, no doubt picked up hastily from the airport – a thimble with a dolphin on it, a cuddly toy, a puppet, a pen with a sparkly pom-pom on the end.

As she got older, she started asking questions about the places he’d been to and from then on, he usually bought her a travel guide. She had loads of them lined up alphabetically on her bookshelf and she knew she could open any one of them and see the mark her father had made on the map showing exactly where he’d been on that particular trip. She remembered him telling her that one day she could travel wherever she wanted to. What started off as an easy gift idea had turned into her dad’s way of encouraging her to explore the world.

But over time, it became clear to both of them that she was a home bird and very content to stay in the welcoming confines of Manchester and its suburbs. She’d been on many holidays abroad with her parents – Spain, Greece and even Florida one time – and she enjoyed them, mainly because her parents didn’t seem to argue as much, but she was always happy to come home.