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But then everything was OK because Mother got a job on the till in a garden center and the doctor gave her pills to take every morning to stop her from feeling sad, except that sometimes they made her dizzy and she fell over if she stood up too fast. So we moved into a room in a big house that was made of red bricks. And the bed was in the same room as the kitchen and I didn't like it because it was small and the corridor was painted brown and there was a toilet and a bathroom that other people used and Mother had to clean it before I used it or I wouldn't use it and sometimes I wet myself because other people were in the bathroom. And the corridor outside the room smelled like gravy and the bleach they use to clean the toilets at school. And inside the room it smelled like socks and pine air freshener.

And I didn't like waiting to find out about my maths A level. And whenever I thought about the future I couldn't see anything clearly in my head and that made a panic start. So Siobhan said I shouldn't think about the future. She said, “Just think about today. Think about things that have happened. Especially about good things that have happened.”

And one of the good things was that Mother bought me a wooden puzzle which looked like this

And you had to detach the top part of the puzzle from the bottom part, and it was really difficult.

And another good thing was that I helped Mother paint her room White with a Hint of Wheat, except I got paint in my hair and she wanted to wash it out by rubbing shampoo on my head when I was in the bath, but I wouldn't let her, so there was paint in my hair for 5 days and then I cut it out with a pair of scissors.

But there were more bad things than good things.

And one of them was that Mother didn't get back from work till 5:30 p.m. so I had to go to Father's house between 3:49 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., because I wasn't allowed to be on my own and Mother said I didn't have a choice, so I pushed the bed against the door in case Father tried to come in. And sometimes he tried to talk to me through the door, but I didn't answer him. And sometimes I heard him sitting on the floor outside the door quietly for a long time.

And another bad thing was that Toby died because he was 2 years and 7 months old, which is very old for a rat, and I said I wanted to bury him, but Mother didn't have a garden, so I buried him in a big plastic pot of earth like a pot you put a plant in. And I said I wanted another rat but Mother said I couldn't have one because the room was too small.

And I solved the puzzle because I worked out that there were two bolts inside the puzzle and they were tunnels with metal rods in them like this

And you had to hold the puzzle so that both rods slid to the end of their tunnels and they weren't crossing the intersection between the two pieces of the puzzle and then you could pull them apart.

And Mother picked me up from Father's house one day after she had finished work and Father said, “Christopher, can I have a talk with you?”

And I said, “No.”

And Mother said, “It's OK. I'll be here.”

And I said, “I don't want to talk to Father.”

And Father said, “I'll do you a deal.” And he was holding the kitchen timer, which is a big plastic tomato sliced through the middle, and he twisted it and it started ticking. And he said, “Five minutes, OK? That's all. Then you can go.”

So I sat on the sofa and he sat on the armchair and Mother was in the hallway and Father said, “Christopher, look . . . Things can't go on like this. I don't know about you, but this . . . this just hurts too much. You being in the house but refusing to talk to me . . . You have to learn to trust me . . . And I don't care how long it takes . . . If it's a minute one day and two minutes the next and three minutes the next and it takes years I don't care. Because this is important. This is more important than anything else.”

And then he tore a little strip of skin away from the side of the thumbnail on his left hand.

And then he said,