‘I… I’m okay.’ She mouthed sorry at Marie as she picked up her rucksack and followed Carly out of the room.

Mum crossed the floor and slotted The Little Mermaid DVD into the side of the TV. She handed the remote control to Marie.

‘I’ll drop your sisters at school and then I’m going out but Dad’s working from home today and he’ll—’

‘Please don’t leave me.’ Marie grabbed her mum’s hand and tried her to pull her back.

‘Mum!’ Carly shouted from downstairs.

‘I’ve got to go. See you later. Love you.’ Mum dropped a kiss on the top of Marie’s head. The front door slammed and a sense of separation saddened Marie. She listened to her sisters’ chatter as they piled into the car below her window. The engine roared to life and it felt to Marie as if they weren’t just driving away from the house, they were driving away from her. Tears poured down her cheeks, soaking into her Ariel pyjama top. Marie had never felt so lonely.

It wasn’t long until she heard Dad climbing the stairs. ‘I’m under orders to bring you Calpol,’ he boomed cheerfully. She was eight and could swallow a paracetamol but Marie still preferred the sweet gloopy medicine that tasted of strawberries. She didn’t want to see her dad, though. She certainly didn’t want to speak to him. She quickly shuffled under the covers and turned her face to the wall, forced her breath to be slow and even as she pretended to be asleep.

She was good at pretending.

Dad quietly put the bottle and the spoon on her bedside cabinet and left the room, leaving Marie alone with her fake stomach ache, in her fake life where everything suddenly felt as temporary as the stage scenery in her school production of Annie. From the outside the buildings looked real and solid when in fact they were weak and flimsy. Easy to knock down.

Each time the DVD reached the end it would whirr back to the beginning, but Marie had barely registered her favourite film. Her mind was a slideshow of clips from completely different movies, but instead of the usual characters, it was her and her family playing the parts. Herself and Leah separated from their mother and abandoned by their father, placed in the care of a cruel Miss Hannigan, waiting for a Daddy Warbucks who never came – it’s a hard knock life. Carly, thin and hungry, holding out a bowl – please, sir, can I have some more? Bruno forced out of the home he loved, fleeing from the Dog Catcher who wanted to lock him up. Reliant on begging for spaghetti from a kindly Italian restaurant owner so he didn’t starve.

It was all too much. She must have got it wrong. She slid out of bed and padded downstairs. Dad was in his study, his back to her as he hunched over his laptop. Instead of pushing her way in like she usually would, clambering on his lap, she hesitated in the doorway, uncertain and afraid. It was Bruno who spotted her first. He was dozing in the corner in front of the bay window where a patch of sunlight warmed the carpet. Immediately he bounded over to her, ears flapping and tail wagging. He delightedly licked her face with his rough tongue.