She shook her head.

‘No.’ His face fell a bit. ‘Oh, well.’

He caught sight of the back seat then and blinked. A couple of chocolate buttons had melted into the cream leather seats, and although Tanzie had picked away at them as best she could there was definitely a brown mark. The footwell was covered with mud and leaves from where they had been walking around the woods. Norman’s drool had traced snail trails everywhere. At home she could wipe his jowls with a cloth, but trying to do it in the car made her feel sick. Mr Nicholls saw her looking and gave a half-smile, like it really didn’t matter, even though you could tell that it probably did, and turned back to the wheel.

‘Okay then,’ he said, and started the engine.

Everyone was silent for about an hour, while Mr Nicholls listened to something on Radio 4 about technology. Mum read one of her books. Since the library had closed, she’d bought two paperbacks a week from the charity shop but only ever had time to read one. Sometimes, if Mum was doing extra shifts, Tanzie would find her in the morning lying there with her mouth open and a book propped on her pillow. Because she was not very good at understanding simple equations, their whole house was now full of tattered paperbacks that she swore she was about to read.

The afternoon stretched and sagged, and the rain came down in thick, glassy sheets. They drove past endless rolling green fields, through village after village, moving restlessly in their seats and pulling rucked shirts from the small of their backs. All the villages had started to look pretty much the same after Coventry. Tanzie gazed out of the window and tried to do maths problems in her head but it was hard to focus when she couldn’t do workings out on a pad. It was about six o’clock when Nicky began shifting around, like he couldn’t get comfortable.

‘When are we next stopping?’

Mum had nodded off briefly. She pushed herself upright abruptly, pretending she hadn’t, and peered at the clock.

‘Ten past six,’ Mr Nicholls said.

‘Could we stop for some food?’ said Tanzie.

‘I really need to walk around. My ribs are starting to hurt.’ Nicky’s legs were too long for even this car. His knees were folded up against Mr Nicholls’s seat, and he looked like he was being squashed into the corner by Norman, who lay across him, his big pink tongue lolling out through his teeth.

‘Let’s find somewhere to eat. We could divert into Leicester for a curry.’

‘We’ll be fine with sandwiches.’

Nicky groaned quietly.

‘Do you guys eat nothing but sandwiches?’

‘Of course not. But sandwiches are convenient. And we don’t have time to sit down and eat a curry.’

‘I love curry,’ Nicky said mournfully.

‘Well, perhaps we’ll have one in Aberdeen.’

‘If I win.’

‘You’d better, small fry,’ said Nicky, quietly. ‘If I eat another stale cheese sandwich I’m going to start curling up at the edges.’

Mr Nicholls drove through a small town, then another, and followed the signs to a retail park. It had begun to get dark. The roads were thick with Saturday-evening traffic and beeping cars filled with football supporters, celebrating a match involving teams nobody had ever heard of, their faces joyous, pressed against the windows. The Audi crawled through it all, its windscreen wipers beating a dull, insistent tattoo, then finally stopped outside a supermarket and Mum climbed out with a loud sigh and ran in. They could see her through the rain-lashed window, standing in front of the chiller cabinets, picking things up and putting them down again.

‘Why doesn’t she just buy the ready-made sandwiches?’ muttered Mr Nicholls, looking at his watch. ‘She’d be back out in two minutes.’

‘Too expensive,’ said Nicky.

‘And you don’t know whose fingers have been in them.’

‘Jess did three weeks making sandwiches for a supermarket last year. She said that the woman next to her picked her nose in between shredding the chicken for the chicken Caesar wraps.’

‘And none of them wore gloves.’

Mr Nicholls went a bit quiet.

Jess emerged several minutes later with a small shopping bag, holding it over her head as she ran the short distance to the edge of the kerb.

‘Five to one it’s own-brand ham,’ said Nicky, watching. ‘Plus apples. She always buys apples.’

‘Own-brand ham is two to one,’ Tanzie said.

‘Five to two it’s rubber bread. On special.’

‘I’m going to go right out there and say sliced cheese,’ said Mr Nicholls. ‘What odds will you give me on sliced cheese?’

‘Not specific enough,’ said Nicky. ‘You have to go for Dairylea or cheaper own-brand orange-coloured slices. Probably with a made-up name.’

‘Pleasant Valley Cheese.’

‘Udderly Lovely Cheddar.’

‘That sounds disgusting.’

‘Grumpy Cow Slices.’

‘Oh, come on now, she’s not that bad.’

Tanzie and Nicky started laughing.

Mum opened the door, and held up her carrier bag. ‘Right,’ she said brightly. ‘They had tuna paste on special. Who wants a sandwich?’

‘You never want our sandwiches,’ Mum said, as Mr Nicholls drove through the town.

Mr Nicholls indicated, and pulled out onto the open road. ‘I don’t like sandwiches. They remind me of being at school.’