I try not to sneeze as I snort, bits of wool still inside my nose. I’ve wanted one of these fluffy jumpers forever, all jelly-baby bright, and now I can’t stop sneezing whenever I wear it. I got it myself, by the way. Not her.

‘Where are you off to?’ She coughs into a hand, can’t look at me.

‘Out with Rach,’ I say as I squint into the mirror on the wall. My face looks stripy from the fairy lights twinkling round the frame. Pretty, pretty. Like it should be.

‘Where to?’

‘What do you care?’

‘I’m your mother, Carly, I have a right to know.’

‘You have a right? Haven’t we done enough pretending that you have a right to anything?’81

She stares at the floor. Even she knows I don’t have to answer to her now she’s been incapable for so long. I push past to the better light in the bathroom, examining the chunky studs shining round the curve of my right ear in the tiny mirror above the sink. If it wasn’t for the swelling round the top, my ear could be made of gold, but instead it looks diseased.

I frown at myself. I should never have let Rach get her hands on it. Like a job in Claire’s Accessories makes her a professional. She’s barely been out of school a month, and that’s only because she’s two years older than me.

‘Please, Carly…’ I spot Ma staring behind me. All hollow pale grey, she may as well be a hundred years old. I start brushing my teeth to drown her out.

‘Ly-Ly?’ A pudgy little hand swats at my leg.

Spitting toothpaste into the sink, I squat, cupping Kayleigh’s face with my hand, running my thumb over the shiny hair-slides she’s clipped all wonky into her downy fringe. They aren’t from Ma either. It’s only Rach who really knows what we both like.

‘Ly-Ly stay,’ she lisps, pulling fluff off my jumper. ‘Ly-Ly see Lay-ly…’

I pull her to me, wondering if she can hear my heart thudding against her face. She snuffles into my front like a pig.

‘Please, love,’ Ma says, leaning on the doorframe, arms lolling against her sides like she’s about to slither on to the floor. ‘You’re only fourteen…’

‘You didn’t give a shit when I was twelve,’ I say, squeezing Kayleigh in my arms. ‘You couldn’t even look after your own baby. Do you think now she’s made it to three you can give me chapter and verse? She’s still here because of me, you useless old cow. Not you.’

‘I know it hasn’t been easy,’ she says, sagging into the doorframe. ‘I don’t know what we would have done if Jason hadn’t—’