I know why Aaron bought me the kitten. I’m not stupid and it was pretty obvious. He bought me the kitten to make me want to stay home. I knew he was uncomfortable about the amount of time I was spending outside the flat, and he’s not stupid either. It was kind of genius. Because how could I want to be hanging around outside on my own in the dark and the cold and the wet when I could be cuddled up with Angelo, the kitten of my dreams?

But it didn’t really work. It was kind of out of sight, out of mind. When I was home with Angelo, I was obsessed with him. I stared at him; I watched him like he was the best TV show ever made. Everything he did enchanted me. In the mornings he’d wake me up by walking across my face with his little needle claws out, and I didn’t even mind. He smelled like a cloud, like a pool of fresh water, like the top of a mountain. I picked him up sometimes just so I could smell him. I loved him. I really, really did love him.

But he wasn’t enough, not enough to stop me wanting to go out, pull up my hood and disappear in plain sight.

The first time I spent the whole night outdoors was New Year’s Eve.

I told Aaron I was going to a party at Jasmin’s and spending the night. Aaron had a job behind a bar in Kilburn for the night, double hourly rate and massive tips; he did it every year, usually came home with a couple of hundred pounds for one night’s work. I said I’d be home early on New Year’s Day to take care of Angelo, and Aaron said he’d take me out for a late Nando’s if I was up for it.

I packed up my overnight bag, and got my sleeping bag out of the top of my wardrobe (bought for and not used since my year six PGL trip. It was bright pink with hearts on it). I packed some food, some meat for the fox, a hot-water bottle in a furry cover, a portable charger for my phone, a toilet roll and some hand sanitiser. I wore lots of clothes even though it wasn’t that cold. I picked up Angelo and kissed him and pulled his claws out of my clothes and smelled him and left him in the kitchen with some newspaper down and some biscuits in his little bowl.

The last thing I heard before I left was the sound of his little teeth crunching up his food.

I did show up at Jasmin’s. She was having what she kept calling a soirée. Rolling her Rs. A swor-r-r-ay. I don’t even know where she got the word from. She looked appalled when I took off my coat and she saw me all layered up in hoodies and fleeces and my worst joggers.

‘Are you even trying any more?’ she asked.

I said, ‘I’ve got plans. I need to be warm.’

‘Tell me you’ve got some cute little bralet on underneath that or something?’

I said, ‘No. I look shit. Deal with it.’

I stayed till about eleven o’clock. It was fine. It was the girls from school, a couple of their boyfriends. I had a glass of red wine. I figured it would help me sleep. There was music and chatting and then some of Jasmin’s aunties turned up drunk from the pub and they were really loud and funny and then there was louder music and some dancing and it was nice. I knew everyone would make a fuss about me disappearing before midnight, that they’d all try to persuade me to stay. So I didn’t say I was going. I just picked up my rucksack and the end of a bottle of wine and I went.

I peered into Roan’s windows from the street. They were a little steamed up so I figured they were home. I wondered what people like Roan and his wife did on New Year’s Eve. Did they go out for posh dinners? Or get drunk and dance in their mates’ houses? Or did they just sit and drink wine on the sofa?

I climbed over the wall into the empty plot and set up my little sleeping area behind the JCB. No one would see me there if they happened to wander in. It also protected me from the wind. I put a blanket down on the ground, after moving a few chips of rock out of the way. I took off my top hoodie and rolled it up into a pillow shape. I put my Puffa coat back on and pulled a beanie down over my ears. I sat with my back against the JCB and I drank the wine from the bottle. I’d never had more than one glass of wine before and I was pleasantly surprised by how good it felt, what a difference it made to everything. I looked at my phone: Jasmin was posting endless films of everyone dancing and screeching and leering into the camera. I didn’t feel like I was missing out. I was where I wanted to be.

I checked the time: 11.28 p.m.

I messaged Jasmin and told her I’d gone home because I was tired and wished her a Happy New Year and she didn’t reply which meant she was still having fun. I didn’t want her to worry about me.

I finished the wine and felt a blanket of gooey drunkenness envelop me.

At midnight the sky filled with fireworks. I thought of Aaron behind the bar in Kilburn, loading a dishwasher with glasses, surrounded by drunk people. I thought of Granddad up in the sky doing whatever dead people do in the sky.

And then I heard a door open and close, and the sound of a man coughing. I went to the front wall and peered through the trees and saw Roan shrugging on a coat, leaving his house. I tiptoed round the perimeter and watched him as he turned the corner and pulled his phone from his pocket.

‘Hi,’ I heard him say. ‘It’s me. Happy New Year.’

I heard a tinny woman’s voice in the background.

‘Are you OK? Are you …? Oh, OK. Yeah. Good. No, I can’t talk for long. I just said I was putting some rubbish out. Yeah, we’re all just, you know, hanging out. Having champagne. Nothing special. You know. No. Nothing like that. Quite quiet. Yes. I know, I wish that too. Fuck, yes, of course I wish it. You know I do. I wish it so much. Alicia. Fuck, I love you so much. Yes. Yes. This time next year, I swear. I swear. This time next year it will be you and me, the Maldives, maybe, the Seychelles, yes! Better food! God, yes! Just us. I promise. I swear. I love you so much. I love you so much. Fuck. Alicia. I need to go back in now. Keep the faith, my beautiful girl. Just keep the faith. Yes. Yes. You too. Happy New Year. I’ll see you in three days! I love you. I love you, Bye. Bye.’

And then, silence.

I went back to the front of the plot and looked towards Roan’s house. The wife was there, in the doorway, in a sparkly jumper and jeans, socked feet, a glass of champagne in her hand.

‘Where’ve you been?’ she called out to Roan as he turned the corner.

‘Nowhere,’ he said. ‘Just thought I heard something.’

‘Heard something?’

‘Yeah. Shouting. I was just being nosey. Think it was just merrymakers.’

I didn’t hear what the wife said in reply because another load of fireworks went off. But my heart raced. Roan Fours, the man I’d sat in a room with every week for more than three years while he unpeeled the layers of my psyche so gently and skilfully: here he was, making plans to leave his family for some titian-haired temptress. This time next year.

This time next year the skinny wife would be living in some shit flat somewhere because it would be all she could afford and his kids would have to shuttle back and forth between two shit flats and sit making awkward conversation with Alicia, and looking after their mum because her heart would be broken and she wouldn’t be the mum they knew any more, she’d be a new mum, and their childhoods would be shattered and changed. And how did I know all this? I just did. I could see it in the skulking form of the son with his spliff and his fox, who already knew that life was going to be hard, and in the confident swagger of the big-boned daughter with the booming voice who thought that life was always going to be this easy. And I saw it in the nervous elbow-rubbing of the wife who’d built her life around a man she thought would never let her down, whilst knowing all along that he would. I knew it because I could see it. With my own eyes. Because, as I keep telling you, I’m not stupid.

I felt the red wine start to sour in my stomach.

And then I moved back into the shadows again at the sound of the front door opening and closing once more. I heard soft footsteps approach and then turn the corner.

A male voice. ‘Flynn. Mate. Over here.’

‘Yo.’

‘Happy New Year and all that.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Twenty nineteen.’

‘Fuck. Yeah.’

‘Hope it’s not as shit as 2018.’

‘All years are shit.’

‘True. Very true.’

I could see the shadowy outline of the two boys fist-bumping each other through the hedges. Then I saw them turn the corner and head towards the gap between the trees. I flattened myself into the furthest corner. Another load of fireworks went off and I used the noise to cover the sound of me burrowing my way into the undergrowth.

‘Whoa,’ I heard one of the boys say. ‘Look. Rough sleepers.’

I saw the light from a phone arcing across my little campsite.

I felt a burst of territorialism and had to stop myself from storming over and telling them to leave my shit alone.

‘Wonder who it is?’ said one of the boys.

‘Looks like a girl,’ said the other. ‘Look. Pink sleeping bag.’

‘God, that’s really sad. Fancy having to sleep rough when you’re a girl.’

‘Got wine though,’ said one of them, holding my empty bottle up.