As a punishment for what I did to Bobby Gibbs I'm not allowed to go to the Christmas Lights Switch On. Which is a thing that happens every year and which I hate, and which Maisie and Donald know that I hate, but which they pretend that I want to go to anyway so that they can think they properly punished me for what I did to Bobby Gibbs without actually doing anything, really.

They both look in on me one after the other before they go, and both times I pretend to be asleep. It's really easy to fool them. When Donald looks in I just lie still on my side. I don't even close my eyes. I listen to them bumbling around downstairs and eventually the front door slams.

I want to sleep, but I can't sleep. I'm still angry. I lie there looking at the ceiling, making fists and hitting the mattress sometimes. It makes a springy noise. Around midnight there are footsteps in the garden. Gravel crunching. Then the window of my room heaves silently open and it's Mum. Standing there, real. So real I can see her breath.

She stands grinning in the window, nose and cheeks flushed red from the cold. She puts one finger up to her lips. Her hair is tucked away into a glittery woolly hat. All the anger I have just goes. I sit up in bed and she says in the quietest voice, "Get your things. Warm clothes. Shoes. Go on quickly now."

I slip out of bed. I'm not even surprised. I feel like this is something that has been just about to happen all my entire life.