‘Grandma!’ Isla moved away from the TV in quick, backward steps. ‘It’s going to explode!’

There was no reply. Isla opened the living room door to find her mum kneeling on the suitcase. It was a new one: a big grey oblong that she’d bought because she wanted to take things with her. Grandma was sitting on the floor with her legs out straight, trying to close the metal clasps.

‘The TV’s broken,’ Isla said.

Grandma didn’t look up. ‘Did you touch it?’

‘No,’ Isla said, miserably. Her arm was still hurting and she was scared by the thin, high sound coming from the TV.

‘Are you sure now?’ Grandma gave up on the clasp she’d been pressing down on. Mummy stood up and the suitcase sprang open.

‘I didn’t,’ Isla said.

Grandma pushed herself up against the bottom stair and stood, pulling her apron tighter at the back. ‘You’ll have to leave some of these things behind, Louisa. It’s a suitcase, not a bus.’

Mummy stared at the case as if it had done something wrong.

‘Let’s have a look at the telly,’ Grandma said. She followed Isla into the living room and switched the TV off. The high noise faded away. ‘Let it cool down a while.’

Isla wished she had thought of that.

‘I think I heard you give it a whack,’ said Grandma. ‘Didn’t you?’

Isla’s skin became hot all over. ‘No,’ she said. She felt the lie as a big, quaking mass, pushing its energy into her limbs, making her more than a small person who was not yet five.

‘I heard you,’ Grandma repeated. ‘I’m only fifty-two, lovey. I’ve all my faculties intact.’

Isla gripped her aching arm. ‘Sorry,’ she said, and she was small again, and not important.

‘Why did you fib?’

‘I’m not a good girl,’ Isla said. She addressed the striped pocket of Grandma’s apron.

Grandma knelt down in front of her so they were almost the same height. Isla put her hands into the pockets of her dungarees and let Grandma look at her.

‘What in God’s name makes you say that?’ She squeezed Isla’s face between the palms of her hands.

Isla did not reply. She made her hands into fists and pushed them deeper into her pockets.

‘What is it now?’ Grandma said. ‘Tell me what’s the matter.’

Isla didn’t know how to explain what the matter was. She knew she had enjoyed hitting the TV, and she was only sorry about it because she was missing her show and her arm hurt. And she knew – this was worse than her aching arm – that Grandma was talking about Daddy when she’d said what she’d said. He’s a bad ’un. She swayed forward within the clamp of Grandma’s hands.

‘Am I a bad ’un?’

‘No, lovey. You are not,’ Grandma said.

‘But what if I am?’

Grandma dropped her hands into her lap. ‘We have a way of dealing with this, where I come from.’ She turned sideways and put her ear close to Isla’s mouth. ‘Tell me your worst secret. Go on. Say it very quietly. I won’t tell a soul.’