The last time he had something to ask me it was whether I smoked. Mum had to leave the room when I said ‘no’, because she knows different. I used to go down Buggery’s for her Silk Cut. She never said anything when I came back with two packets, one opened and already half-smoked. She’s been trying to give up since she met Simon. ‘Like kissing an ashtray, Jan. A very beautiful ashtray, but an ashtray nevertheless,’ he says whenever she sneaks out the back for a fag. Then she’ll shout that he doesn’t understand, maybe throw something at him (nothing hard, a cushion, a tea towel), and in the end he’ll say, ‘It’s the craving, my love, for the evil nicotine,’ which only makes her worse, so he’ll go out and buy her some chocolate, and they’ll disappear upstairs to make up. At that point, I’ll go outside for a fag.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ says Mum.

Finally Simon finds the button on the remote and Coronation Street fades to black.

‘I was watching that.’

He raises his eyebrows and touches the edge of his red-rimmed glasses. These are new. I wonder if he even needs glasses.

‘It was getting to a good bit.’

‘Joanna,’ he begins. ‘I could help you understand what a “good bit” – a crucial point in the plot – might really be. At your age you should be reading something that will stretch your mind more than TV soap.’

‘I read.’

‘What do you read?’

I try to remember what we’re doing in English. ‘Shelley,’ I say.

He touches his specs. ‘Percy Shelley?’

‘Frankenstein. We’re doing it at school.’

A smile flickers across his lips. ‘Interesting. That’s good. Anything else?’

‘Can I have Coronation Street back on?’

‘Do you like Frankenstein?’

I think about the monster bounding over the crevices at superhuman speed. For some reason, that bit stays in my head. ‘No,’ I say. ‘It’s crap.’

‘You could try something else. Another classic.’

‘Like what?’

He breaks into a smile. Rubs his thigh. ‘Like Wuthering Heights.’

‘Is it good?’

‘Oh, it’s more than good.’

‘Any sex in it?’

‘Plenty. Of a sort.’ He touches his specs again. ‘But that’s not the point.’

‘Can I put the TV back on?’

‘The point is,’ he says, ignoring me, ‘the point is that… you’re a bright girl, and yet your mother tells me you don’t apply yourself at school.’

‘I do all right.’

‘I know what it’s like. All those old schoolteacher types droning on from on high. School’s bloody dull for a girl of your spirit.’ He flashes his little teeth at me.

‘It’s all right.’

‘Joanna,’ he says, ‘I’m giving you a chance.’

I look him in the eye and I’m surprised when he looks right back at me.