Lunch with Claire seems so long ago now I’m confused at first as to why he is asking.

‘She’s good. I’m just going to have a quick bath, is that OK?’ I lean against the door. I so badly want to open it and let him hold me. I want to tell him how sorry I am for everything and how much I love him. I wish I could tell him the truth but he’d never forgive the real me. I look down at the phone in my hand and see the frozen image of my naked body on the screen. I feel sick. I delete it and another takes its place.

‘I put the Christmas decorations up,’ he says.

‘I saw that, looks really nice. I’m glad you got a tree.’

‘I found something else in the attic, when I got the decorations down.’ I hold my hand up to the wood. Imagining his hand on the other side, wishing I could hold it.

‘Not another wasps’ nest?’

‘Not this time. I found a box of old notebooks.’

I’m quite sure I stop breathing.

‘They look like diaries.’

We are all just ghosts of the people we hoped that we were and counterfeit replicas of the people we wanted to be.

‘I hope you didn’t read them,’ I say, wishing I could see his eyes, to know what he’s thinking and whether his next response is the truth.

‘Of course not. Well, at least not when I realised what they were. I was intrigued by the 1992 in big letters on the front of one of them though. How old were you then? Ten?’

‘Eleven,’ I reply. ‘You should never read another person’s diary,’ I add, sinking to the floor, closing my eyes and leaning my head against the wall. ‘They’re private.’

Before

Christmas Eve, 1992

Dear Diary,

I have never been awake this late before. It’s 1 a.m. and when the sun comes up it will be Christmas Eve. Taylor came to stay at our house last night and she’s still here, asleep up in my bedroom. Mum and Dad said she could stay one last time before we move; I threatened to cut my hair even shorter if they said no. We’re moving out on 27th December so that Dad can start his new job the next day. I’ll have to start at another new school in a whole new country in January, they don’t even know which one yet, that’s how little they care about me. Mum says Taylor can come and visit us in Wales once we’re settled in. Mum says things will be different this time. Mum is a LIAR.

Taylor didn’t say much during dinner and hardly ate any pizza. It was Mum’s fault because she got us a Hawaiian, which meant Taylor had to pick off all the little bits of pineapple before she could eat it. Taylor’s mum would never have got that wrong, she knows what we both like to eat. We’ve really got no money left at all now, not even any coins in Nana’s rainy-day jar. Dad was at the pub. He has a friend there called Tab who pays for all his drinks and I heard Dad say there was no need to pay him back before we leave. Mum was cross about it for some reason, so she put the pizza on Dad’s credit card, which is strictly for emergencies only, and said not to tell. It was like we ate an emergency pizza.

Mum went to bed early, she said she was exhausted. If she’s so tired all the time, I don’t know why she has to take sleeping pills every night, but I was glad she left us alone. Taylor and I watched a film. I’d seen it before so I watched Taylor watching the big TV. I turned all the lights off, like her parents do on movie nights, and her face was all lit up from the glow of the screen, like she was an angel. She didn’t laugh at some of the funny bits, even though I did, she just gave me a sad look and then stared back at the screen. I held her hand because I wanted to and she let me. I squeezed it three times and after a little while she squeezed it three times back, she still wouldn’t look at me though.

When the film was finished we went up to my room. We talked for a while, but not for as long as we normally do, mainly because Taylor kept talking about things that had happened that I wasn’t a part of. She’s been hanging out with a girl called Nicola, they do ballet classes together at the church hall. I don’t do ballet classes, we can’t afford them. Apparently, Nicola is really funny and tells jokes all the time. Taylor says I’m still her best friend, I checked to make sure. I don’t know why she needs other friends, I don’t have any and I’m fine.

Taylor told me she’s really looking forward to Christmas Day. Her whole family will be at her house and Taylor says her mum has bought the biggest turkey she’s ever seen, as big as an ostrich, which is very big. Her nana, who she calls Grandma, is going to stay with them and it made me feel sad about my nana, so I didn’t speak for a while, just listened. I’m good at listening, people say all sorts if you just let them. That’s when she said she didn’t want me to go to Wales and it made me so happy that the thought of me leaving was what made her so sad. I promised her then that I wouldn’t be going anywhere and I meant it, I keep my promises.

Dad came home drunk and made a lot of noise when he came up the stairs. I was embarrassed but also a bit glad, he sleeps very deeply when he’s been to the pub and Mum’s sleeping tablets work so well it’s almost impossible to wake her. Taylor is asleep upstairs too. They all are.

I’m not allowed matches. They are on the same list as scissors, but I have a whole box of them. I’ve had them for a while now. I took them from school the day we learned about Bunsen burners, I learned a lot that day. I lit one match before I came downstairs. A little bit of me wanted Taylor to wake up, so that we could do this together, but she didn’t move so I let her carry on sleeping. I liked the smell of the match burning so much I let it burn the ends of my fingers. I wanted the flame to extinguish itself.

I’ve packed my school rucksack with all the important stuff.

The three most important things are:

1. My favourite books, (including Matilda, Alice in Wonderland and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe).

2. My diaries.

3. My best friend Taylor. I’ll never leave her behind, because we’re like two peas in a pod.

Then

Christmas Eve, 2016

I lie in the bath, wishing that the water was hot enough to burn my body, but I don’t want to hurt the child trying to grow inside me. I imagine how this scene might look in a few weeks’ time, a skin-coloured hill protruding from the bath water, a new land, waiting to be claimed. I rest my right hand on my stomach, gently, as though it might hurt me back, as though it isn’t a part of me. I don’t feel anything. Maybe it is just too soon.