I’d always prided myself on my kids. Sure, Cassie wasn’t as academically gifted as Mike might have wished, but she was pretty and popular and seemed happy. I was just now finding out what my mother had always said – pride was a sin. And the punishment was to learn how wrong I’d been about all the things I took pride in. My marriage, my long friendships, my house. That still stood, but tracked through with blood and dirt and now Cassie’s vomit on the stairs where they’d carried her out. My mother had scrubbed it by the time I got back home on the Saturday morning, having spent the night in the hospital yet again, the dirty feel of unbrushed teeth becoming normal to me. She’d given me a darting, fearful look, one I recognised from my childhood, after my father had hit her, or me. Shame. I didn’t say anything, just gathered what pyjamas I could find of Cassie’s and threw them in a bag. Most of them skimpy and unsuitable for hospital. I’d buy her more, it would give me a thing to do while I waited for her to wake up.

As I packed in Cassie’s room, noticing that she’d taken down all the pictures of her and Aaron, the ghosts of BluTack on the paint, my mother came up behind me, the drag and tread of her feet so familiar it set my teeth on edge.

‘I didn’t know,’ she said stiffly.

‘You left pills out where she could find them? You’re still on that crap?’

‘I – I haven’t taken them in years, Alison. It’s an old pack. I just thought – just in case it was hard. Being here.’ She sucked in breath. ‘She – she seemed alright. Quiet, but she would be.’

‘There must have been something that wasn’t normal.’ I didn’t look at her. A vast and unformed pool of rage was swirling in my stomach. For this. Not just for this. For everything all at once.

‘I don’t know what’s normal for her,’ she said quietly, without accusation, and I found myself weeping hysterically, a noise coming out of my mouth like the scream of ambulance sirens.

I was on Cassie’s bed, or beside it, kind of kneeling. ‘I can’t do this. It’s too much. I can’t. I can’t bear it!’

I felt her hesitate, then her cool hand – she always had such poor circulation – touched mine and I felt the cotton of the handkerchief she always carried up her sleeve. ‘It’s always hard to see your child suffer.’

So many things I could have said then. But you let him. He hit me. You went out of the room and you let him. Instead I took the hankie she offered, wiped my red face. ‘Thank you for being here. I know it isn’t easy.’