He sat close to the mattress with the sketchbook on his lap and began drawing with delicate caution. Every time he raised his head to look at me, his pencil hand would pause as if awaiting fresh instructions from his eyes.

I couldn’t see what he was doing from where I lay, so I watched his face instead. After the first few strokes of the pencil his expression changed; he stopped evaluating me as if I were a problem, and his face lit up with a kind of grace. I kept expecting him to say something corny—tell me I was pretty or whatever—but he didn’t speak, and the pressure to laugh slowly eased, like a weight lifting off my chest.

November 2008

Stella throws my window wide open, despite the wind and rain, and I sit up in bed with a squeak of protest. She can’t seem to do anything low-key tonight—not since Tom turned up on our doorstep around ten o’clock, ashen faced, with his wife’s goodbye note in his hand. Everything Stella has done since, she’s done with emphasis: hurling open the window, tossing her hair off her face, striding around my poky room as if it were a stage set.

“The rain’s coming in,” I say, and this is annoying because my English coursework notes are on the windowsill. I suppose it’s petty to think about A levels, though, in the context of Tom’s ordeal.

“Who cares!” Stella flings her arms wide and lifts her chin, as if she is about to sing an aria, and if her nightie were longer she would make the perfect leading lady. Her nightie is black, with just the right amount of satin sheen and lace trim, and the thin straps leave her shoulders bare. I suppose her hands aren’t exactly a heroine’s—since she started her course at the college they’ve gone grey and powdery, and there is always clay beneath her fingernails—but they are barely visible in this light.

“I hope Tom will be all right,” I say, shivering in my penguin pyjamas. It was horrible, hearing him cry; worse than I could ever have imagined. I wonder what Dad has said to comfort him. I hope he hasn’t talked too much. I hope he hasn’t said, “Things could be worse,” or “Cheer up!”or “At least you and Natalie hadn’t got round to starting a family.”

The voices fall silent at last, and I hear Dad coming upstairs to bed. Stella and I made up the sofa bed earlier on, and Stella found a new toothbrush in the bathroom cupboard. I put a pile of books on the coffee table in case Tom couldn’t sleep, but Stella said that was stupid—“He’s not going to feel like reading, you numpty!”—so I took them away again.

A rainy gust sends my coursework fluttering across the carpet. Stella slams the window shut with a “Grrr,” as if I’ve moaned at her, although I haven’t said a word.

“Look at us,” she says. “Whispering and twittering in your bedroom like two little girls. Like children!”