‘A bus? Isn’t he in the middle of nowhere though, near Worthing? That’ll take you ages.’

‘Yes, but Massimo’s in London today so he can’t take me. The bus will be fine.’ I didn’t even know when they ran in the afternoons or how far ten pounds would get me. I tried to come up with an excuse for not having a cash card to get any money out. I couldn’t tell her the truth: that the last time I’d taken a taxi to see Dad, Massimo had cut up all my bank cards, then scratched ‘Bitch’ with one of the sharp edges into my lower back until it bled. I’d resolved to leave him, but then Sandro got a chest infection and Massimo had been so concerned, helping me steam his chest every day, buying vaporisers for the room, ringing the doctors, that I’d missed the moment. I was so wrung out by the time Sandro was better, I didn’t have the energy to fight Massimo’s decision to dole out a daily allowance, left in cash on the table after breakfast every day, much less to pack my bags and go.

My mind was whirling. I’d have to pretend I’d lost my purse. I could hear the panic in my voice, the fear that Dad’s distress would be growing, spiralling down into confusion, thinking his daughter couldn’t be bothered with him, not even when he was in pain.

But before I could launch into an explanation about my lack of money, Maggie said, ‘Let me take you, if you don’t mind a trip in the boneshaker. We can drop Sandro at Mum’s and she can fetch Sam from training and bring them back here.’

‘No, no, that’s too much trouble.’

Maggie grabbed hold of my arm. ‘It’s fine, come on, let’s go.’

Sandro looked as though my dad breaking an ankle was the best Christmas present he could have.

Sugar. Swimming.

I knew what Massimo would say. I could feel his hands on my upper arm, his forefingers digging into the muscle to leave identical dotty bruises on either side. He’d be so close, I’d be able to smell what he had for lunch on his breath. ‘You thought seeing your father who won’t even fucking remember you’ve been there was more important than teaching our son not to drown?’

I’d be silent. And so would Sandro.

And tomorrow morning, I’d rush to get Sandro’s sheets before Massimo discovered them. And another little flake of varnish from the dull patina of Sandro’s self-esteem would peel away.

‘Lara?’ Maggie’s voice was gentle, but puzzled. ‘Shall we go?’

I hesitated, ‘I don’t want to put you to a lot of trouble. Perhaps I’ll take Sandro swimming as planned and wait for Massimo to come home. He’ll take me later. The doctors are with Dad, he’s in good hands.’

She sounded exasperated. ‘It’s no trouble. You’d do it for me.’ She turned to Sandro. ‘And you’re not looking too unhappy about eating biscuits with Beryl instead of practising your doggy-paddle, are you?’

My thoughts were jumbling around. Everyone wanting a piece of me. Sandro perking up and making doe eyes at me. Maggie expecting me to be capable of rational decisions when my entire life was about as far from logical as it was possible to get. The horrible image of Dad wrestling with his carers, the confused tentacles of his mind wriggling to grasp onto the memory of his daughter and wondering where she was.

And none of them with a pull as powerful as my fear of Massimo and what he would say when he found out that we hadn’t been to a swimming lesson.

Maggie ran her hands through her curly hair, making it stand out even more as though she’d just emerged from a couple of nights sleeping rough under a bridge. Her eyes flicked from me to Sandro and back again. I nodded and stepped towards the car. She helped Sandro to his feet. ‘Let’s go and find a Kit-Kat, shall we?’

The tension dropped in Sandro’s shoulders.

I could see why Nico loved her.

17

MAGGIE

Discovering Lara in a right tis outside the house was just the distraction I needed. Over the last few weeks, Francesca had been asking about the bloody gold box as though she had a sixth sense that I was holding something back. Her sulky attitude with me was starting to creep back in, the nasty jibes resurfacing. And last night she’d snapped at me. ‘I don’t know why you haven’t bothered to find it yet. Just tell me where you think it might be and I’ll go and look myself. I don’t know what your problem is.’

My problem was that I wished I’d never found the sodding thing. I’d sat for ages that afternoon, weighing up what would be worse: to change her memory of her mum forever, to allow her to discover that her parents’ relationship wasn’t what it seemed and to let her question Nico about the inscription and watch the certainties of his first marriage shrivel and shrink, rewriting a happy history into a flawed and buckled mess. Or to ditch the box and hope Francesca would eventually forget about it and get over her fury at its disappearance. In the end, I went with my heart. They’d both suffered enough and I’d just have to put up with Francesca being a bit pissed off with me.

So that afternoon, I’d waited until the house was empty, then peered out of the upstairs window to double-check Anna’s car wasn’t there. I couldn’t have her popping up like an all-seeing jack-in-a-box. The last thing I needed was her catching me in the act of what was effectively stealing.

But for very good reasons.

I shoved the box and all its contents into a plastic bag and strode off to the skip that seemed to have taken up permanent residence at the end of the road. As I got closer, my heart felt like it was going to squeeze through the gaps in my ribs and start ricocheting around the street. I didn’t know how burglars ever got up the courage to break into someone’s house.

I paused for a moment, looking up and down like some shifty lowlife about to leave a bag of cocaine in a hiding place. I had no idea how much the box was worth but it had to be approaching six or seven hundred quid. God. I could buy Mum a new fridge with that. And replace her telly with something that didn’t have high definition as a futuristic concept. I’d never owned anything that expensive in my life and now I was going to wang it in a skip. I might as well take a wodge of twenties and scatter them in the sea. I’d even thought about taking it to one of the charity shops in town but decided against it in case Francesca spotted it in there on one of her shopping marathons.

I hesitated, peering over the metal lip into the junk below. No money in the world would buy back the comfort of good memories. The happy family fug that Francesca was clinging onto had to be worth more than a few hundred quid. In the end, I convinced myself that several years paying for therapy if she found out what her mother was really like would cost much more than the fricking jewellery box.

So, with a quick glance around, I poked the bag between an old sofa and broken rocking horse, hearing a last gasp of flutes and violins as it slid, then crashed, into a space at the bottom. As soon as I’d done it, worry and guilt engulfed me, leading me into a thousand what ifs. Plus Beryl-like thoughts of what I could have spent the money on if I’d flogged it on eBay.

But Lara greeted me with such a level of nuttiness on the pavement outside my house that I barely had time to dwell on whether I’d made a great decision or a fatal one. I was capable of weird and wonderful behaviour myself – Nico was always teasing me about how he could hear me talking to myself as I sewed: ‘Perhaps a silver sequin next to the red one’ ‘What that needs is a nice bit of black lace’ – but Lara took it to another level.

Apart from the weirdo ‘we’re really rich but I’ve never bothered learning to drive’ bullshit, she seemed so dithery about getting to her dad, drivelling on about Sandro’s bloody swimming, which he didn’t seem to give the slightest hoot about missing. Christ, Mum’s rage if I put Sam perfecting his crawl above making sure she wouldn’t be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life would be enough to keep the whole of Scotland warm in winter.

When I finally persuaded Lara to let me take her to her dad via Mum’s, her reaction to seeing the estate reminded me of Nico the first time he’d come with me. Their middle-classness stood out like a vegan sausage in a greasy spoon café. Lara’s navy scarf, draped round her neck in a decorative rather than keep-the-cold-out loop, her light green cardigan with heart-shaped buttons, her hair shiny with expensive shampoo – she was missing that sharp edge of on-guard that defined the majority of the people who lived here.

But I had to love her for the way she was struggling not to look horrified at the puddles of piss, the remains of bicycles chained to the railings, the doors with their peeling paint. Such a contrast to the Victorian terraces we lived in now, painted pale pastel colours, with their dawn-to-dusk sensor lights creating a welcoming glow.

‘Did you live here for very long?’ Lara said as we ran up the stairs to Mum’s flat.