He hoists me up, groaning as he carries me out of the door and into the spare room, where Cecelia and Mum are jiggling on the spot.

Only it’s not the spare room any more. It’s not even a green-screen room. It’s the beach.

The edges of bright blue tarpaulin poke up from the sides of a floor filled with pebbles and sand, with plastic buckets and spades and even a windbreaker propped up round a sunlounger. Dangling from string from the ceiling are rubber gulls, and playing from speakers in the corner is the sound of them squawking over the swish of the waves.

And then there’s the sea. Not on the carpet – because even the very best tarpaulin isn’t good enough to stop that being a bad idea. It’s –

‘Mum’s home birthing pool, as requested,’ Cecelia says. ‘Don’t tell her that we stole it, though, whatever you do. She’s got a woman fit to burst any day now who’s booked it, so you better hope to God that she doesn’t go into labour tonight. Midwife or not – Mum will actually un-birth me if she finds out.’

Mum shakes her head. ‘“Un-birth”?’

‘Murder, kill, decapitate – just trying to keep the mood beachy,’ she mumbles.

Dad carries me over to the pool and I stare into the water – clear and warm like an exotic sea.

‘This does get cleaned between births, doesn’t it?’ I ask, poking my finger in.

Cecelia rolls her eyes. ‘How clean do you think the sea is, Al?’

And she does have a point there.

Dad lays me down on the sunlounger in the middle of the room and I look up at a light bulb that could very well be a real sun.

‘Wait,’ Mum says, leaning over and popping my sunglasses on me.

‘Wait,’ Dad says, passing me a bottle of factor-thirty suncream.

I laugh. ‘For a light bulb?’

‘Alice!’ Cecelia says. ‘That is the sun. And this is the beach. That is the surprisingly unsalty sea and those are birds and you need suncream.’

I smile at her. And Dad. And Mum. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘Really. You think he’ll like it?’

Just as I say that, the doorbell goes and Cecelia jumps.

Mum rubs her hands together. ‘Well, let’s find out, shall we?’

Mum and Dad scurry off, but Cecelia leans down, putting her hand over my mouth to stop me hyperventilating.

‘Shut up,’ she says as I try to speak under her hand. ‘No – shhh! You look hot. This room is amazing. And that door –’ she points behind her – ‘that door is staying CLOSED.’

I lick her hand and she takes it away, grimacing.

‘But Mum and Dad –’

She shakes her finger. ‘You just leave them to me.’