This time I didn’t know what I’d done. Why would my dad be angry with me just because I wasn’t in when he got back from Liverpool? I leaned my back against the car and dug in the cracks between the paving stones with a pebble. Some ants came out and scurried off. I knew my dad wouldn’t just get angry at me for something I hadn’t done. It wasn’t like that, there was always a reason. It was just making it worse not going home, and everyone out looking for me, and wanting to blame me for playing out late.

I got up and felt calm. I could hear the brakes of lorries slowing on the main road before they turned the corner. There was the rattle of shutters closing down on the shops. It was all right, I hadn’t done anything. The light was going. I got to the front door and knocked.

My mum opened it. She frowned and shook her head at me. ‘You’re more trouble than you’re worth!’ she said.

‘No I’m not.’ I only muttered under my breath, but I wasn’t gonna be nice to her, because whatever it was she should have been looking after me.

‘Go on, go up!’

I gave her a look. I was angry, but mostly I was going to cry.

She bit her lip. ‘Ah, no,’ she said, ‘Don’t. Go on, your daddy’s waiting.’

‘Where have you been?’ He was lying propped up on his arm on one of the empty beds in the front room. He put his glasses on and I had the feeling he could see where I’d been hiding. All the beds had been made, but no one else was home.

‘Playing out,’ I said.

‘At what time do you call this?’ He looked at his watch and looked back at me. My mum came in and stood by the window. It was her fault, she was the one who should have been watching me. I looked across at her and burst into tears, the ones that flood you and can’t stop, and you struggle to get your breath back.

My mum threw her hands up and shook her head.

‘Come and sit down,’ my dad said, more softly than I could make sense of.

I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to stop sobbing. I was crying because I was confused. Because my dad was after the truth and I didn’t know what it was, my mum wasn’t telling me. And I was crying because I wasn’t in the wrong, and because I was stubborn. And because it was late.

‘This is serious,’ he said. And, after a pause, ‘What happened this morning?’ I looked at him, and up at my mum. ‘What did you tell those people?’

I told them there were eighteen of us living in the house.