Dominic’s exams are in a few weeks. It doesn’t matter. He’ll go to the local school, which is not a grammar, but no worse than the rest of them. Anyway, Terry was right – where did all her A grades get her? Dominic stands from the table with clear contempt – for her, for him – but shuts the door to his bedroom quietly. Even in temper he will not slam it.

There never used to be punishments. Most of the time, when she was lucid, she and Dominic were mates. She never wanted to be the kind of aloof, lofty parent that thinks they know best, when life had proved so completely that they didn’t. Occasionally, if Dominic happened to pick a moment when her head was pounding, and said something cheeky about one of her boyfriends, or joked about her making them late again, she would feel her mood hardening, and without meaning to she would round on him, and tell him he was a rude little brat with no respect. But still there were no punishments. Terry was the one who started on those. It was for Dominic’s own good, he explained at the beginning. She’d been too soft, she’d let him do whatever he wanted, children didn’t need that. And since by then it was clear she’d been doing everything wrong, she thought he was probably right. At first it was chores – doing the washing up, cleaning the bathroom. But later there were slaps around the head. Not hard at first, just enough to shock, they didn’t leave a mark, a lasting indictment. Until once, Dominic fell sideways against a door and lost a tooth, and Simone found herself persuading Dominic that Terry didn’t mean it, he didn’t mean it, and concocting a story for his teacher. After that, frequently, there was a belt. Or a fist. And then occasionally, without warning, there were weird penalties that she could never understand, like the time Dominic had been painting a poster for a school project, and used the kitchen table without asking, and so Terry made him drink the muddy paint water. She remembers Dominic looking at her in bewilderment when Terry had ordered him to do that, his face as clouded as the water; but she had only shrugged – helplessly, uselessly. She didn’t get it either. And she said nothing.

Things have been better lately between Terry and Dominic – a fact that she can see makes her son’s shoulders almost rigid with anticipation, because calm sometimes means that something is brewing. Increasingly over the past weeks, Terry has been talking, or preaching, sitting them all down for lectures: about the devious Tory government, or the history of class exploitation, the way the working classes are mollified, the way that bankers are still getting away with everything. He spends hours talking about the idiot poshos who live on their street, rubbing privilege in their faces. He quotes documentaries he’s watched, and YouTube commentators, pulling together disparate ideas like a manic professor. And as Dominic listens, Simone watches him preparing, steeling himself, like the saucepan he once lifted. But the harder the steel, the harder it is for her to read him. Dominic is scared, she can see that. But there’s something else too – anger, madness? Sometimes she wonders what her son is capable of.