I held out the phone to Nassim. Nassim came back up the street and put on his well-behaved-boyfriend voice. ‘Hello, Mr Krause.’

I could hear Dad’s voice, small and insect-like, down the line.

Call me Joe, please. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to meet you, I’m looking forward to it.

‘Me too, Mr Krause.’

So, Nassim, this is a really difficult situation. Cathy says you seem really nice and I’m sorry you’re not getting a chance to meet her at her best, but I want to ask you, on her behalf, to forgive her.

I snatched the phone back. ‘You can’t do that, Dad. You can’t put him in that position.’

‘Hey!’ said Nassim, reaching after the phone. ‘I can speak for myself, you know.’

I moved away from him. Nassim threw his hands up and walked away down the street.

‘Hey sweetie,’ my father was saying, ‘I think you should calm down for a moment.’

‘But Dad. It was about me. It was important. Doesn’t she care about me? Not even a little bit?’ I had trouble catching my words. Nassim drifted further down the street into the dark, away from me. I dropped my voice and with that the crying came harder. ‘She doesn’t care, Dad, she doesn’t.’

‘Oh honey, shh. She does care, I promise.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do know that, honey.’

‘No, you don’t! You’re making it up to protect me. You always lie to protect me.’

‘She cares, Anna.’

‘Well, I’m starting not to.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Dad, I have to go. I think Nassim might be trying to leave.’

‘Okay sweetie. Say goodbye to Nassim, let him go home and process this a bit, and you go back inside and make yourself a cup of tea or something.’

‘Okay.’

‘It’s all going to be alright, I promise.’

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

For two days me and Mum were two closed bedroom doors facing each other across the hallway. All that night, my mother hid away in her bedroom, sobering up, or passed out, I didn’t know which. The next morning she came into the kitchen where I was eating breakfast among the red wine mess I refused to clean up for her, and she made tea and put a cup on the bench next to me. And then she stood there for a while and finally said, ‘I’m sorry, Anna. I’m so, so sorry.’ I didn’t look up or respond or even pick up the cup. She went on. ‘Things are going to be different,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect you to believe me, but you just watch. Okay? Okay, Anna?’ Still I didn’t look up at her and eventually she went back upstairs to get ready for work, and the tea sat there growing cold until I left for school for the last day of term. Happy holidays indeed.

When I came home she wasn’t there, and the kitchen was sparkling clean and the cup was in the dishwasher, and later that night when she came home I was already in my room. She knocked quietly but I didn’t answer, so she went into her own room. And when I ventured out later to go to the bathroom, I could hear her fingers on her laptop keyboard, clacking away behind the closed door.