“I’ll call you in five minutes,” I say. As soon as I’m off the phone, I run to Adam’s and my bedroom and get my three tiny glass angels out of my bedroom drawer. It’s an embarrassing superstition that I have, one I can’t seem to shake off: if I’m going to be speaking to or seeing either or both of my parents, I need to have the angels with me—in a pocket, in my sock, somewhere. They’re my lucky charm. No one knows about them, not even Adam or Melissa.

Once they’re safely in my pants pocket, I go back to the spare room and call Mum, feeling adequately armed. That doesn’t mean she won’t wound me, but it will prevent the wound from being fatal.

“What’s so urgent?” I ask her.

“Did you kill this Damon Blundy man?” she asks without preamble. “Were you having an affair with him?”

I feel like a fisherman who, after an agonizingly long wait, has caught a large, rare fish. There’s something satisfying about getting proof—yet more proof—that I’m right not to trust my mother, right to believe she doesn’t and never has had my best interests at heart. Ideally, she would indicate that she thinks I’m bound to have murdered someone every time I spoke to her; that would save me the hassle of wondering, periodically, if she might not be quite as monstrous as my father.

“I definitely didn’t kill Damon Blundy, but thanks for thinking of me,” I say. “As for an affair, that’s none of your business.”

“It’s the police’s business, since he’s been killed,” Mum says. “And . . . Dad and Lee say, and they’re right, that it needs to be Adam’s business too. You’re the mother of his children, with them every day, their main carer. Adam needs to know the truth about you. We’re not happy about any of this, but you’ve left us with no choice. You’ve gone too far this time, Nicki.”

She thinks I did it. She really thinks I killed him. I didn’t, but I feel a cold, hard pride all the same.

“No, you’ve gone too far,” I correct her unemotionally. It’s not an act. In the presence of my parents and Lee, my feelings do a runner. I couldn’t cry or get angry now if I tried. I’m an android, specializing in sarcastic put-downs. “By the way, the gone-too-far-this-time line would have had more impact if you hadn’t been saying it to me since I was a toddler.”

“Put Adam on the phone. Or do you want me to drive over there?”