Jack is tired of me, and rightly so, I think to myself as I walk into the bedroom and shut the door. They don’t need all this trouble and turmoil. I gaze up at the ceiling, in the centre of which is a beautifully ornate ceiling rose.

I remember Georgie commenting on the rose when she first viewed the house, back in 2000. It was a renovation project but she and Jack put every penny they had into restoring it to its former glory. I remember the first time I visited, with Dad and his new girlfriend. Lynda. God, just thinking about that woman makes me feel tense. She had worked alongside Dad at the stationery company and had offered him consolation after Mum died, though if the whispers I overheard between Jack and Georgie were anything to go by it seems Dad and Lynda had been growing close long before Mum’s death. I just hope Mum never knew. That would be too much to bear. I hope, instead, that she went to her death feeling loved and secure.

I was fourteen years old when I first set foot in this house and was already feeling like an outsider. Dad had sold the family home and moved to a new-build bungalow in the centre of Reading. ‘Lynda thinks it’s time for a fresh start,’ he told me when I said I didn’t want to leave. ‘And she’s right, Vanessa. It’s not healthy to dwell on the past.’ And so I did as I was told and left everything I loved – my yellow bedroom, the kitchen where Mum and I had danced around to Radio 2, the walled garden with the birds she had talked to like old friends – Mr Robin and Mr Sparrow off on their morning stroll – and went to live in a bland, soulless house with my dad and a woman who made it clear that three was a crowd.

Seeing Georgie so happy with her family in her beautiful house made me feel even more alone, though she always did her best to make me feel like I was part of the family, that I was loved and cared for. But I remember vowing, as I played with little Imogen in this bedroom, that one day I would have a home that was all mine, and nobody would be able to take it away from me.

And now I’m back here, trapped like a cornered rat.

I close my eyes and I’m just about to drift off to sleep when there’s a knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ I call, my voice reed thin.

The door opens and I see Jack’s figure silhouetted in the darkness.

‘Oh, sorry, V,’ he says. ‘I thought you might still be awake. I’ll leave it.’

‘No, it’s okay, Jack,’ I say, sitting up in the bed and switching on the lamp. ‘What is it?’