She hadn’t heard him at first, over the sound of the crowd, and Tanzie’s muffled wailing and the children crying nearby because even though they didn’t know him they understood the utter sadness of a dog lying motionless in the road.

‘Nathalie? His tongue. Look. I think, he’s panting. Here, pick him up. Get him in the car. Quick!’ It had taken three of Jess’s neighbours to lift him. They had laid him carefully on the rear seat, and had driven in a blur to the big veterinary practice on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t as quick as Mr Miller by the crossroads, but they had an operating theatre and hotlines to all sorts of specialists. Nathalie had cradled Norman on the back seat, crouching in the footwell so that she could support his head. Jess loved Nigel for not once mentioning the blood all over his upholstery. They had rung her from the vet’s and told her to get down there as fast as she could. Under her jacket, she was still in her pyjamas.

‘So what do you want to do?’

Lisa Ritter had once told Jess about a huge deal her husband had done that had gone wrong. ‘Borrow five thousand and you can’t pay it back, and it’s your problem,’ she said, quoting him. ‘Borrow five million and it’s the bank’s problem.’

Jess looked at her daughter’s pleading face. She looked at Nicky’s raw expression: the grief and love and fear that he finally felt able to express. She was the only person who could make this right. She was the only person who would ever be able to make it right.

‘Do whatever it takes,’ she said. ‘I’ll find the money. Just do it.’

The short pause told her he thought she was a fool. But of a kind he was well used to dealing with. ‘Come this way, then,’ he said. ‘I need you to sign some paperwork.’

Nigel drove them home. She tried to give him some money but he waved her away gruffly and said, ‘What are neighbours for?’ Belinda cried as she came out to greet them.

‘We’re fine,’ she muttered dully, her arm around Tanzie, who still shook intermittently. ‘We’re fine. Thank you.’

They would call, the vet said, if there was any news.

Jess didn’t tell the kids to go to bed. She wasn’t sure she wanted them to be alone in their rooms. She locked the door, bolted it twice, and put an old film on. She went around the house and secured every window, drawing the curtains and propping a chair underneath the back-door handle just for good measure. Then she made three mugs of cocoa, brought her duvet down and sat under it, one child on each side of her, watching television that they didn’t see, each alone with their thoughts. Praying, praying that the telephone wouldn’t ring.

34.

Nicky

This is the story of a family who didn’t fit in. A little girl who was a bit weird and geeky and liked maths more than makeup. And a boy who liked makeup and didn’t fit into any tribes. And this is what happens to families who don’t fit in – they end up broken and skint and sad. No happy ending here, folks.

Mum doesn’t stay in bed any more, but I catch her wiping her eyes as she washes up or gazing down at Norman’s basket. She’s busy all the time: working, cleaning, sorting out the house. She does it with her head down and her jaw set. She packed up three whole boxes of her paperback books and took them back to the charity shop because she said she’d never have time to read them and, besides, it’s pointless believing in fiction.

I miss Norman. It’s weird how you can miss something you only ever complained about. Our house is weirdly quiet without him. But since the first forty-eight hours went past, and Mr Adamson said he was in with a chance, and we all cheered down the phone, I’ve started to worry about other stuff. We sat on the sofa last night after Tanzie went to bed and the phone still didn’t ring and then I said to Mum, ‘So what are we going to do?’

She looked up from the television.

‘I mean, if he lives.’

She let out a long breath, like this was something that had already occurred to her. And then she said, ‘You know what, Nicky? We didn’t have a choice. He’s Tanzie’s dog, and he saved her. If you don’t have a choice then it’s actually quite simple.’

I could see that even though she really did believe this, and it might actually be quite simple, the extra debt is like a new weight settling on her. That with each new problem she just looks a bit older, and flatter and wearier.

She doesn’t talk about Mr Nicholls.

I couldn’t believe after how they’d been together that it could just end like that. Like one minute you can seem really happy and then nothing. I thought you got all that stuff sorted when you get older, but clearly you don’t. So that’s something else to look forward to.

I walked up to her then, and I gave her a hug. And that might not be a big deal in your family, but I can tell you in mine it is. It’s about the only stupid difference I can make.

So this is the thing I don’t understand. I don’t understand how our family can basically do the right thing and yet always end up in the crap. I don’t understand how my little sister can be brilliant and kind and some sort of damn genius, and yet pretty much everything she loves has disappeared, just because she’s a bit different. I don’t understand how it is that she now wakes up crying and having nightmares and I have to lie awake listening to Mum pottering across the landing at four a.m. trying to calm her down, and how she stays inside in the day, even though it’s finally warm and sunny, because she’s too afraid to go outside any more in case the Fishers come back to get her. And how in six months’ time she’ll be at a school whose main message is that she should be like everyone else or she’ll get her head kicked in, like her freak of a brother did. I think about Tanzie without maths, and it just feels like the whole universe has gone mad. It’s like … Morecambe without Wise, or Jaffa Cakes without the orange. I just can’t imagine who Tanze will even be if she doesn’t do maths any more.