“So this will be your room while you’re here,” I hear Julia say. I press so hard on the paper, my pen goes through and ruins my essay. I clench my teeth. Bella’s standing at the door listening as Julia gives Jack and Sean a tour of the house. She’s so desperately eager. I’ve heard her on the phone loads of times, pleading with them to come visit, phone calls that have always ended abruptly with no goodbyes. Do they hang up on her? She’s been living here for nearly three months and today’s the first time she’s seen her sons in person since she left Greg. Bella has been moved in with me and they’ve given the boys her room.

Julia’s been rushing around, tidying and sorting, one minute singing, the next nervously pacing. I’m feeling much the same. Nothing to do with them—but Julia said she’d invited Max and Lena down for the weekend too. To make things easier for Jack and Sean, she said. I’ll put up with them for a week if it means seeing Max again. They weren’t even supposed to be staying originally. They were meant to be home at Dean House, but Greg announced he was going to be away working, so here they bloody are. I don’t even know why—Jack’s eighteen, so why can’t they bloody stay on their own over at Dean House?

“They’d better not touch any of my stuff,” Bella mutters, pulling the door a fraction wider.

“You haven’t left anything private in there, have you?”

She laughs. “Course not. I wouldn’t trust them.”

“You don’t fancy them anymore, then?”

She throws herself onto the bed. “Oh, I don’t know…when they moved here, they were like these shiny new things. I did fancy them—who wouldn’t? Jack at least, Sean’s a bit…” She pauses and pulls a face. “He’s a bit solemn and scowly, isn’t he? But Jack, God, he’s so funny and bloody gorgeous. I really thought he liked me back.”

“But?”

“But he got together with Nic,” she bursts out. “I was pissed off with both of them. But then Nic died and Jack didn’t even seem bothered. And that seems so wrong. God, I know it was just a sex thing with them, Nic told me that. He always talked to me more than her, about Ellie and other stuff. But he should have cared more. Or at least pretended he did—he knew she was my friend.”