You’d have thought I’d have got used to it. Apart from a few haphazard relationships, none of which had turned out particularly well, I’d been on my own since Mum died. At just eighteen I’d had the responsibility of being a fully functioning grown-up thrust on me. I was totally overlooked by the state as I floundered about in my grief. I didn’t feature on anybody’s list because technically I wasn’t at risk, although practically, of course, I was like a tiny baby turtle swimming in the wide-open ocean. I’d effectively been orphaned almost overnight with Dad disappearing less than two weeks before Mum died. But how did that make me worthy of attention? Parents leaving happened to children every day of the week.

Plus, I’d not been left homeless. The house just came to me and there was no one there to say otherwise, so Social Services didn’t even need to rehouse me. I was of no concern to anyone and so no one took any notice of me. It was just Leah Allen against the world. And usually I had the upper hand. Having said that, ‘feisty and independent’ were all very well, but sometimes I longed for a bit of ‘protected and cherished’ instead.

The television was on downstairs. It was always on when I was awake and, for a while before the children were born, when I was asleep as well. I liked the soundtrack that it provided to my life. It didn’t matter that the voices didn’t belong to actual people in the house with me. It was just comforting hearing them. Without them, the tiny space felt too quiet.

Having pottered about picking up the kids’ belongings and dropping them at the bottom of the stairs for them to ignore the next day, I settled myself down on the sofa and turned my attention to the screen. I flicked through the channels and stopped on a reality show about a sink estate in Birmingham, but I didn’t really engage.

Instead I picked up my phone and scrolled through my Facebook timeline. It was full of people I knew from school either complaining or drinking or both. I wasn’t sure why I wasted my time with them. I loved to follow strangers, though, who travelled the world experiencing the things that I might have done had things worked out differently. I’d sit on my little sofa absorbing their photos of distant and exotic places like a flower soaks up sunlight. It was my secret pleasure.