‘Dad, you’re going to die!’ I shouted, because you’re not allowed to touch electrical things, especially not with anything sharp.

‘It’s OK,’ Dad said.

He beckoned me over. We looked together at the socket cover as it came off.

You could see inside the wall underneath, where there was a secret passage for electric wires. A brown and a blue lead ran there. The socket contained a metal plate, small screws and other metal parts.

‘That’s a bit like the socket’s skeleton,’ Dad said.

I know about skeletons because I’ve read a skeleton book. An earthworm hasn’t got a skeleton, but a snake has. But an earthworm does have a ladder. And I thought, the wires are the house’s veins, because they run inside the walls, from one room to another.

Mum stroked the wall, found another nail and twisted it out with the hammer. Then she said, ‘Saara, come and stand against this wall.’

And I went and stood where the dresser had stood before. Mum took a thick felt-tip pen out of her pocket and drew a line just above my head. Next to the line, she wrote: 12.5.2007.

‘Stay there,’ Mum said. ‘Don’t move.’

She started drawing a line round me. She started next to my shoulder, drew down along my arm, tickling me in the gaps between my fingers, then curved into the armpit and down the side as far as the floor. Then up along the other side. The pen smelled; it had spirits in it. Children aren’t allowed to touch them because they won’t ever come off. Or child. I’m an only child. Finally, Mum drew round my hair. Two plaits and bobbles. When the felt tip came back to my shoulder, Mum said, ‘That’s it, now you can jump out.’

And I jumped out and looked at my picture in the middle of the living-room wall. It was like Peter Pan’s cut-out shadow in the film. Feet planted slightly apart, shirt tails swinging.

‘If someone moves in here after us and they do the house up, they’ll find this and see what kind of girl used to live here.’

‘Oh, where are we moving?’ I asked.

‘Nowhere.’ Mum laughed. ‘We’ll never move from here! We’ve got too many projects to finish.’

Dad laughed, though it didn’t sound like a laugh. Then he wrote Saara next to the picture Mum had drawn.

‘Oh, but aren’t you big?’ Mum sighed, looking at me and the picture in turn. ‘Are you really that big?’

‘You did draw round the edges,’ Dad said, but he sounded surprised himself.

I went to stand next to the picture, to prove the point.