I can’t get hold of Bridget or Emily and now my phone’s on red. I should save any scrap of battery for incoming calls, I suppose. Brilliant – just brilliant. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so lonely, and God knows I’ve felt so much loneliness there was a time when I wondered if I’d feel anything else. Where is Bridge? I suppose she might well have crashed out – it’s been an exhausting – not to mention traumatic – twelve hours. But what if something has happened? What if someone has come after her? No. I mustn’t think like that. I’ve no idea where Emily is either. What has happened to them both?

That’s a point. What if something bad has happened to Emily and Bridget?

Oh, Rosie. Sometimes I wonder whether once you start with trouble, it is so very difficult to stop. Sometimes I think it started with our dad leaving us. If Dad hadn’t left Mum – let’s face it, if he hadn’t laid into her every time he’d had a skinful – we wouldn’t have had to move in with Grandad and Granny. If Uncle Eric hadn’t lived there… My mum, your granny Casement, didn’t believe in luck. You make your own luck, she used to say, and I agree, to a point. But sometimes life can throw you into a hole, and no matter how many times you try to crawl out, the ground slips, you lose your footing, you’re dragged back in. Your dad, my Stan, he was the one who pulled me out of that hole for good, Rosie. He pulled me out and held me until the hole filled and the ground was safe again.

But of course, through no fault of yours or mine or his, we lost him. Another hole blown beneath us, the two of us tumbling down. I became overprotective – I see that, of course I do. I saw it even before this, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps when something really bad happens, the reason you can’t stay out of the hole is because you keep throwing yourself back in without knowing it.

Thinking about it, I’m guessing that the Saturday before last, when your auntie Bridge and I bumped into you on Hampton high street, you were supposed to be meeting him, weren’t you? And I’m thinking that you wouldn’t have done that in secret if I hadn’t been so protective, do you see where I’m going? I threw us back in the hole, Rosie. Me. If I’d been normal, you could have been normal too. If your dad had been here, he would have helped me to be normal, but he couldn’t help, could he, because… because he isn’t here. He isn’t here any more.

Oh God, I’m tying myself up. I can’t stop thinking about how shocked you were to see us; how shocked I was to see you there, not where you’d said you’d be. What did you do – text him to warn him away? Or did you spot us through the café window and he sneaked out through the back? I remember you looked very hot and bothered and you went to the loo. Did you text him from there? Did you talk to him? Was he in there with you?

No, of course he wasn’t, what am I saying?

If only I’d seen him that day. I would have known. I would have realised. I wouldn’t have recognised him from your hundreds of Facebook friends, would I? Of course not. But if I’d seen him, I would have known immediately. I could have saved you. As it was, we saved you that time but only enough to put you in danger once again. Your auntie Bridge said there’s no way we could have known. She said there’s no way any parent can keep tabs on everything their kids are up to. All we can do is tell you to stick to the path and trust that you won’t stray into the wood. And at the end of the day, it’s about trust, isn’t it? I thought you trusted me, but I suppose now I realise that trust is like respect: if you want someone to trust you, you have to trust them in return. I didn’t trust you to stick to the path. You saw that. And to shake me off, you strayed into the wood.

Thank God I trusted my instincts that following Saturday though. My God, can it really only be this morning? That’s enough to make my head explode. I think I got suspicious because I couldn’t understand why you would agree to meet Naomi again after she’d stood you up only the previous week.

‘Oh, Mum, you don’t get teenagers,’ you said. ‘We’re not like adults. We don’t get all stressy about things like that. Stop putting your old-person stuff onto my social life.’

I stood corrected but something didn’t square up. I can’t put my finger on what it was, but I got the feeling you were lying to me.

‘When did you say you were meeting her?’

You shrugged and looked at your trainers. ‘Same.’

‘Same what? Place? Do you mean Caffè Nero or that Thyme place?

‘Time? Eleven thirty.’

‘Don’t be smart with me, young lady.’

‘I’m not.’

‘So what time?’

‘Thyme for Coffee.’

I almost slapped you. I almost wrapped my hands around your neck. ‘Don’t be so bloody cheeky. You know what I mean! What time are you meeting her?’

‘Eleven thirty. I just said, didn’t I? God, Mum, you are so controlling. You’re suffocating me. I literally can’t breathe.’

‘And this is you asking if you can go? This is your attitude, is it?’

‘You already said I could go! Oh my God, you can’t change your mind, it’s not fair.’

I grabbed you by the zip of your hoody. Oh my love, I actually grabbed hold of you. What was I thinking? I wasn’t – that’s the point. I’d, as you would say, lost it.

‘I can change my mind any time I like, young lady,’ I said. ‘I can change my mind and do you know why? Because you’re fifteen, you are a child, you are my child, and I’m a grown-up and I’m your mother and if I say you can’t go then you can’t, do you understand?’

You met my gaze, your eyes like coals.

‘Why won’t you just fuck off?’ You shouted this into my face. ‘I hate you.’

And before I’d even had time to process the words that had come out of your mouth, you turned and ran down the hall. You grabbed your rucksack and jacket from the coat hook. You left.

I hate you.

That’s the last thing you said to me.