Bessie stood and watched Michelle walk away down the road without looking back. She felt consumed with sadness, overwhelmed with loss, and utterly clueless as to how they might put this right. As she turned to walk back into the house, she caught the swish of Mrs Hicks’s net curtain and cringed with regret, recalling the way she had spoken to their neighbour. Quietly closing the front door behind her, she flopped down at the kitchen table with her head on her arms, and finally gave in to the sobs that had been building. It had been the worst possible day and she struggled to understand how things had gone so very wrong. Was it only that morning that she had sat at the same table with excited anticipation and a sense of hope, as she ribbed her brother and opened her gifts?

‘What on earth is the matter, Bessie? What are you doing down here in the kitchen all alone at this time of night?’ Her mum’s voice took her by surprise, as she flicked on the overhead strip light and put her arm round her, palming circles on her back and cooing, just as she had done when Bessie was a little girl and had tripped over. Bessie wished in that moment that she was still a little girl and that she could rewind to a time when things were less complicated and the touch of her mum’s hand on her back was enough to make everything feel that little bit better.

She looked up, knowing her face would be a teary, snotty mess.

‘Stay where you are – let me grab a cloth.’ Her mum reached for the tea towel, which lived folded in half and dangling from the oven handle, and proceeded to wipe her daughter’s face. Bessie could smell the fumes from bacon fat lurking in its cotton fibres and again fought the desire to vomit. She pushed her mum’s hand away.

‘Now, Bessie, this will never do! Not on your birthday.’

‘Everything’s gone wrong, Mum. Everything.’

‘No, it hasn’t! This is just a little bump in the road, a hiccup. So what? Who cares where you came in the school year?’ She pulled out the chair opposite and sat down. Bessie noticed that her arms looked fat in her sleeveless cotton nightie and wondered if she too would have fat arms when she was older.

‘I care, Mum,’ she whispered. Her exam results were at that moment the very last reason for her tears, not that she could say so.

‘Well, you won’t over time, because much bigger and much worse things will come along for you to worry about.’

‘Jesus! How is that supposed to make me feel better?’ Bessie closed her eyes. How could things possibly get any worse?