I sneeze into my throat as I pause at the top of the path down to the house, lit golden by the rising morning sun. It looks like it usually does, like an exaggerated version of itself, extravagantly spread garden plump with landscaping and bejewelled with flowers, blooms bursting from every bush like flesh from a blouse. There are always flowers, even thistles in the dead of winter. This is a family that spends as much time ensuring all seasons are represented in their home as it spends ensuring everyone learns their times tables.

A shower of petals falls over my foot as I brush past the jasmine curling outside the front door. I sneeze again, wiping my eyes this time. With this year’s autumn still heavily pregnant with summer, the flowers are as heady as cheap perfume.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Marie, I really am, but Katie’s just not well enough for visitors. I did try to call but it rang out…’

I flinch, as usual, at my new name, but she’s too busy closing the door behind her almost as soon as she’s opened it to notice, wrapping herself tight in her fluffy cardigan. Mrs Jolley, the mother of all foster carers, according to Julie. Very well equipped, she told me, as if enough money, space and siblings is all it ever takes.

‘I was on the train,’ I say, swaying on my feet, engraved brass nameplate on the wall to her side so polished and shiny it may as well be a loaded gun. This always happens when my visits fall right after a supermarket shift. Every inch of the journey, every twist of the train out of its Central London knot is too intoxicating to miss just for sleep. It’s like a thread pulling me from the past into 187the future, except I know it will snap in the end. Everything does when the weight’s as heavy as this.

‘I really am sorry,’ she repeats, leaning on the doorframe, like her fluffy cardigan and slippers can genuinely disguise the folded arms and set jaw. ‘But she’s been up sick all night and she’s only just started to settle down. It’s nothing serious – children do pick up everything going, don’t they? But I’m not prepared to wake her – she needs to rest. Especially since your visits are so confusing for her as it is.’

She recoils as I steady myself on the doorframe, dislodging another shower of jasmine from the loops and curls around her perfect porch.

‘We can find another time, OK? I promise we can. I’m happy for you to come back, when she’s a bit better.’

‘Your happiness doesn’t really come into it, does it? You know you have to let me see her. They’ll take her away from you if you don’t…’