‘Jess wouldn’t let you wear lipstick. Take it off.’

‘Suze wears it.’

‘I don’t think that’s going to make Jess any happier about it, Titch. Look, take it off and I’ll give you a proper makeup lesson when you get back.’

She pulled her jacket from the hook and left. Mum had let Tanzie walk to the shop and back since she was nine.

‘I’ll rub it off on the way,’ she called, over her shoulder.

‘Take Norman with you,’ he yelled. Then he made a cup of coffee and carried it upstairs. It was time to sort Jess out. Saying those words to himself made Nicky feel weirdly grown-up. It was time to sort Jess out.

The room was dark. It was a quarter to three in the afternoon but she hadn’t even bothered opening the curtains. ‘Leave it on the side,’ she murmured. The room held the fug of unwashed bodies and undisturbed air.

‘It’s stopped raining.’

‘Good.’

‘Jess, you need to get up.’

She didn’t say anything.

‘Really. You need to get up. It’s starting to honk in here.’

‘I’m tired, Nicky. I just need … a rest.’

‘You don’t need rest. You’re … you’re the household Duracell Bunny.’

‘Please, love.’

‘I don’t get it, Jess. What’s going on?’

She turned over, really slowly, then propped herself up on one elbow. Downstairs the dog had begun to bark at something, insistent, erratic. Jess rubbed at her eyes. ‘Where’s Tanzie?’

‘Shop.’

‘Has she eaten?’

‘Yes. But mostly cereal. I can’t really cook anything more than fish fingers and she’s sick of those.’

She looked at Nicky, then out towards the window, as if weighing something up. And then she said, ‘He’s not coming back.’ And her face sort of crumpled.

The dog was really barking outside now, the idiot. Nicky tried to stay focused on what Jess was saying. ‘Really? Never?’

A great fat tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away with the flat of her hand and shook her head. ‘You know the really stupid bit, Nicky? I actually forgot. I forgot I did it. I was so happy while we were away, it was like all the time before had happened to someone else. Oh, that bloody dog.’

She wasn’t really making sense. He wondered if she actually was ill.

‘You could call him.’

‘I tried. He’s not picking up.’

‘Do you want me to go over there?’

Even as he asked he slightly regretted it. Because even though he really liked Mr Nicholls he knew better than anyone that you couldn’t make someone stay with you. There was no point trying to hang on to someone who didn’t want you.

It’s possible she’d told him because she didn’t have anyone else to tell. ‘I loved him, Nicky. I know it sounds stupid after such a short time, but I loved him.’ It was a shock to hear her say it. All that emotion, just blurted out there. But just for once it didn’t make him want to run. Nicky sat on the bed, leant over and, although he still felt a bit weird about actual physical contact, he hugged her. And she felt really small, even though he’d always thought of her as sort of bigger than he was. And she rested her head against him and he just felt really, really sad because for once he did want to say something but he didn’t know what.

It was at that point that Norman’s barking got hysterical. Like when he saw the cows in Scotland. Nicky pulled back, distracted. ‘He sounds like he’s going insane.’

‘Bloody dog. It’ll be that chihuahua from fifty-six.’ Jess sniffed and wiped at her eyes. ‘I swear it torments him on purpose.’

Nicky climbed off the bed and walked over to the window. Norman was in the garden, barking hysterically, his head thrust through the gap in the fence where the wood was rotten and two of the panels had half broken away. It took him a few seconds to register that he didn’t look like Norman. The dog was weirdly upright, his hair bristling. Nicky pulled the curtain back further, and it was then that he saw Tanzie across the road. There were two Fishers and a boy he didn’t recognize and they had backed her up against the wall. As Nicky watched, one of them grabbed at her jacket and she tried to bat his hand away. ‘Hey! Hey!’ he yelled, but they didn’t hear him. His heart thumping, Nicky wrestled with the sash window but it refused to budge. He banged on the glass, trying to make them stop. ‘HEY! Shit. HEY!’

‘What?’ said Jess, swivelling in the bed.

‘Fishers.’

They heard Tanzie’s high-pitched scream. As Jess dived out of bed, Norman stilled for a split second, then hurled himself against the weakest section of the fence. He went through it like a canine battering ram, sending pieces of wood splintering into the air around him. Straight towards the sound of Tanzie’s voice. Nicky saw the Fishers spin round to see this enormous black missile coming for them and their mouths opened. And then he heard the screech of brakes, a surprisingly loud whumph, Jess’s Oh, God, oh, God and then a silence that seemed to go on and on for ever.

29.

Tanzie

Tanzie had sat in her room for almost an hour trying to draw Mum a card. She couldn’t work out what to put on it. Mum seemed like she was sick, but Nicky said she wasn’t really sick, not like Mr Nicholls had been sick, so it didn’t seem right to write a Get Well Soon card. She thought about writing ‘Be Happy!’ but it sounded like an instruction. Or even an accusation. And then she thought about just writing ‘I Love You’ but she’d wanted to do it in red and all her red felt-tips had run out. So then she thought she’d buy a card because Mum always said that Dad had never bought her a single one, apart from a really cheesy padded Valentine’s Day card once when they were courting. And she burst out laughing at the word ‘courting’.