There was shouting coming from downstairs again. Raised voices seemed to form a soundtrack to the daily routine of the Hassan household, and there was no place to escape it. Faadi sat in his bedroom with a pair of headphones clamped over his ears, lost to the sounds of the game he was playing. He hadn’t gone online that day, or any day since Saturday. He didn’t want to and he hadn’t needed it. He glanced at his phone. He and Rebecca had been messaging each other all day, though it was still taking him at least half an hour to deliberate over each and every reply.

He still couldn’t believe that she would want to talk with him. Whenever she had spoken to him in school – just a general question about something a teacher had been saying or something they had been due to hand in that day – Faadi had found himself speechless, not knowing how to talk to her or what to say. And every time, afterwards, he had regretted his shyness and hated himself for being so awkward around other people.

Downstairs, beneath Faadi’s room, Youssef Hassan was pacing the length of the kitchen. Mahira was sitting at the table, her eyes following her husband as he passed back and forth in front of her. Since the police had left, they had barely said a word to one another. DI Alex King had returned from the shed with a petrol can, the existence of which neither Mahira nor Youssef had been able to explain. She had taken it away with her when she had left; for testing, she had told them. All fingers seemed to point to Syed, who hadn’t been there to defend himself or explain why his name kept recurring during their investigations.

‘Did he do it?’ Mahira asked, breaking the silence. ‘Did he start the fire at the shop?’

The thought made her feel sick. Everything she had worked for had been brought to ruin with a single malicious act. Their new life away from trouble was already a farce. To think that her own son might have been responsible for that was something Mahira hadn’t prepared for and wasn’t ready to accept, yet she had to admit that the possibility was all too plausible. She didn’t know why Syed would do it, but she knew he was more than capable of it.

‘All those reports I’ve made to the police,’ she said quietly. ‘We wanted to be taken seriously here – we wanted things to be different. All I’ve ever wanted is to be treated as an equal, to be shown some respect, and he goes and does this and undermines everything we’ve worked for. The graffiti on the shop … was that him as well? Did he try to cover himself by making it look like a racially motivated attack?’

She stopped talking, realising her words were pouring from her too quickly. This wasn’t like her. She approached things methodically, with a calm head and rational thinking, but this was more than she was able to comprehend. Syed had brought trouble to their home on many occasions, but he had never targeted them directly. Not like this.

‘You’re not going to say anything?’

Youssef turned to the window and folded his arms across his chest. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’

‘What?’

‘I lost my job.’

Mahira pushed her chair back and stood, crossing the kitchen to stand beside her husband. ‘What? When?’

‘July.’

She stepped back as though he had just burned her. ‘July? But … you’ve been away with work since then. You’ve hardly been here.’

He put his hands to his face and rubbed his tired eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’

She didn’t know what to say. Returning to her seat at the table, she waited for some sort of explanation, but none came. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked, sinking into the chair. If she didn’t sit down, she feared she might fall over. Everything else, and now this. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take.

A knotted tangle of thoughts lodged in her brain, the clearest of them being that during the nights he’d been away from home, he had been staying with another woman. There was someone else, and he couldn’t bring himself to admit it to her.

‘Youssef?’

‘I stayed in hotels to begin with,’ he said, turning to her. ‘At first I thought I could act normal, pretend things were fine, find another job and there would be no need to tell you what had happened. The longer it went on, the harder it became to tell you the truth. I’ve been sleeping in the car most nights. I thought I’d find something else. You’ve been so worried about the boys, I didn’t want to burden you with anything more.’

‘Oh, so this is my fault?’

‘No.’ He sat at the table opposite her. ‘Mahira,’ he said, trying to get her to make eye contact with him. ‘Look at me. Please. I never meant for any of this to happen.’

‘Any of what?’ She asked the question knowing there was more to come. He had been lying to her for months and he was continuing to conceal the truth now. She didn’t need to hear the words; she knew what he was going to say.

‘I had to do it,’ he said, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. ‘Please, believe me, if there had been any other option then I would have taken it, but things had got in such a mess and I couldn’t see a way out. There are debts … the house. We needed the money.’

Scraping her chair back across the tiled floor of the kitchen, Mahira stood. She could feel her whole body shaking and couldn’t be sure whether it was with anger or sadness. Everything was broken. Everything she had worked for was lost, and everyone she loved was lying to her. Nearly everyone.

‘The police suspect Syed,’ she said, her voice flat and shallow. ‘You will go to the station tomorrow and you will tell them what you’ve done.’

Upstairs in his bedroom, oblivious to the conversation taking place below, Faadi had received another message.

Want to come to a party with me tomorrow night? It’ll be fun x

He had never been to a party; not like the type the other kids in his year group went to anyway. The last party he had gone to had involved jelly and ice cream and pass the parcel and had been about seven years earlier. His mother had tried to get him to mix with the other kids, but she’d seemed to learn quickly that socialising really wasn’t for him and she had thankfully given up not too long after.

Things were different now. He wasn’t a little kid any more. And another thing: he knew he couldn’t hide away in his room for the rest of his life. He might have spent a few hours with him the previous Saturday, but Faadi didn’t want to end up like Corey Davies. He liked him well enough, but he knew that Corey didn’t have any friends, not real ones, and he didn’t seem to want any. But Faadi wanted to have friends. He wanted to have a girlfriend, and to be able to talk to her.

He was going to have to do something he’d never really done before. He was going to have to be brave.

His fingertip lingered over the phone.

Yeah, that would be good. Thanks x

He hid the phone guiltily when there was a knock at the bedroom door. ‘Faadi,’ his mum said, entering the room. ‘Pack a bag with some overnight things, please.’

‘What? Why, where are we going?’

‘Just do it.’

She had never snapped at him before, not like that. He watched her leave before taking his phone from beneath the cushion he was resting against, watching its dulled screen as he waited for a reply. He didn’t know what had gone on downstairs, but his mother’s appearance had made him even surer that he wanted to go to this party. He loved his family, but he needed to escape the drama.

His phone vibrated in his hand.

I’ll send you the address.

Faadi smiled, stood and put his phone in his pocket before reaching under his bed for an overnight bag.