She’s better today. A lot better. We have bacon and eggs for breakfast and she says she's sorry, really sorry, and promises that she’ll go to the shop next time and get marshmallows and we can toast them over the fire, and there are cows near here we can go and see that'll eat from your hand, and we'll do other things too. It’s raining outside. Water hits the windows in little spits and spots as it dribbles from the edges of the roof.

"Thing is," she says, "we've got to lay low for a little while." She pokes me between the shoulder blades as I'm eating my bacon. "A week or two. That's all. You're not some little blonde white girl. It'll all die down pretty quick. A week or two. That's all. Then... then we make a break for it."

I ask her where, even though I don't care where. If it's with her it'll be fine.

“Somewhere sunny," she says. "I want somewhere warm. Not like this. Miserable this.” She stares out of the window at the rain. "We'll go somewhere we can swim."

Later we are sitting around the fire. We've piled in the rest of the shelves and opened up the board games and we're burning the cards and the money and the little wooden counters. They're all so different, so many of them. I like the way they all shrivel down.

Mum says, "So what have they been saying about me? Those two?"

I shrug. She means Maisie and Donald, and they have been saying what they always say, which is that Mum has problems, and that she needs to sort some things out and that lots of people are trying to help her. I don't know what any of those things mean and I don't care. I tell her that they haven't been saying anything much. Just the usual lot of lies.