The alarm was set for eight o’clock. I wake up groggy and unrefreshed, and almost immediately smell Cash on my sheets. Wow! It was not a dream. For a few more minutes I hug my pillow and replay last night. Creeping around in the dark, sharing a joint on the roof, coming back to my bed. Heat fills my face as I think about how bold I was. How amazing it was. Could this really be my little life?

After a while, I drag myself out of bed and get into the shower. Dressing in my usual uniform of T-shirt and jeans, I go one floor up and knock on Britney’s door.

‘Go away,’ a sleepy voice scolds.

I open the door and enter her room.

She sits up and, when she sees me, smiles at me. ‘Sorry, I thought you were Jacinda. She’s always trying to clean my room when I am trying to sleep.’

I walk up to the bed. ‘It’s only me. I wanted to make sure you were all right. How do you feel this morning?’

‘Super,’ she says a bit too brightly, and pats her bed. ‘Sit down. I want to talk to you.’

I sit at the edge of her bed.

‘You won’t tell Dad about what happened last night, will you?’

‘Of course not,’ I say.

A look of relief passes over her face. ‘Oh good. Thank you. After all, nothing bad, not really bad, happened so no need to worry him.’

‘If you ever want to talk about anything, I’m here, OK?’

She looks down at the pattern of pink roses embroidered on her duvet, her expression undecided, before she looks up with a determined smile on her face. ‘OK. Thank you.’

‘Good. Want to have breakfast together?’

She beams. ‘Yes, I definitely do.’

‘Go on then.’

‘Give me five minutes,’ she says and leaps energetically out of bed. I walk to the window and stand looking out at the garden. It is not a beautiful garden. No one in this house cares for it. Someone comes to cut the grass and trim the hedges, and the tall wall of rhododendron bushes at the bottom of the garden flower and die unnoticed.

Britney is out in less time than it takes me to squeeze toothpaste onto a brush. We walk down the stairs together while she chatters on about one of her bitchy friends. To be honest I have to agree with her. I met the girl once and I didn’t like her one bit.

The breakfast room is full of sunlight from the lantern roof. Cora has already laid out all the breakfast stuff. We drop our slices of bread into the toaster and while we are waiting for it to pop we fill our cups with coffee.

We sit opposite each other at the long table. I butter my toast and cover it liberally with blueberry jam while Britney thinly spreads her slice with butter and an even tinier amount of Marmite. I can smell it from where I am sitting. Ugh. How is that even food?

‘Dad’s taking me to lunch at Groucho Club. Do you want to come with?’

I hold my toast suspended in front of my mouth. ‘Have you forgotten, Brit? I go back to my aunt’s every second Saturday. I’ll be back Sunday evening.’

‘Oh,’ she says, her little face crumpling. ‘What time are you going?’

‘Right after breakfast. My aunt is taking me to an antique fair.’

‘Oh,’ she says as if being dragged around an antique fair is something she has wanted to do all her life.

I smile. ‘Britney Hunter? You hate antiques!’

She bites into her slice of toast. ‘Yeah, I know, but I hate being here on my own more.’

‘You don’t have to be here on your own. Why don’t you ask Natalie to come over?’

‘Natalie is in France.’

‘Right, how about Victoria?’

‘Nah. Don’t worry about me. I’ll probably just paint all afternoon.’

I take a sip of coffee. ‘How come you’ve never shown me your work?’

She worries her lower lip. ‘I’ve never shown it to anyone.’

I stare at her. ‘Why not?’

She shrugs. ‘But I’ll show you.’ She pauses. ‘If you have the time.’

‘Of course I’ve got time,’ I say immediately.

‘Only if you want to.’

I look her in the eye. ‘I want to, Brit.’

‘OK,’ she says and a simple, childlike joy fills her little face.

We finish our breakfast and go up the stairs. We pass the room that leads to the attic where Cash and I had been in last night, and go towards the last room. It bears a skull and cross bones sign on it. When I was first shown around the house this was the one room I had not gone inside. She stops in front of it and turns towards me.

‘I feel really nervous.’

‘If it helps I still draw stick figures.’

She giggles. ‘OK. I trust you. You always tell the truth.’

I feel my ears becoming red. She turns and puts a key into the lock and turns the handle. It is quite a big airy room with a bare wooden floor. There is a mannequin parked at one corner, a tall easel in the middle of the room, and a massive, deep-red velvet armchair by the window. On the floor next to the chair are empty packets of crisps, discarded chocolate wrappings, and a couple of detective novels. Along the walls there are many canvasses lined up with their backs showing to the room.

‘This is my secret room,’ she says in a small voice.

I turn to look at her. ‘I love it.’

She grins. ‘So do I.’

‘Come on then. Show me your art.’

I follow her to the canvasses lined up against the wall and one by one she shows them to me. I say nothing. Just look at each one carefully. They are beautiful but very strange, and leave me with a sense of unease. Most of them are images of unfinished humans or humans with holes cut out of their bodies and children curled up inside the empty spaces. Other figures are white and featureless standing against a dark background. They have a string, like an umbilical cord coming out of them.

‘Well?’ she asks, when I have looked at the last painting.

‘I think they are strangely beautiful. I don’t mean that they are chocolate box pretty, but they have a lot of passion and they are different.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. I don’t know much about art, but these are good. I’ve never seen anything like this before. They are completely original.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispers.

‘Who are these figures? I ask pointing to the featureless people.

‘Me,’ she says simply.

I look at her curiously. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s how I feel sometimes. Unfinished. The most important parts of me missing.’

‘Oh, Brit,’ I whisper softly, my heart breaking for her. Her art is the outward manifestation of her instinctive knowledge that something is missing or lost inside her.

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t want you to pity me.’

‘Come here, you silly Billy.’

She takes a step towards me and I stroke her hair. Strange how much affection I have for her now that I have seen the real her.

‘I don’t pity you,’ I tell her. ‘You have everything. You’re beautiful, you’re talented, you have a family that loves you dearly, you’ve got friends, you’ve got a trust fund, even if you never work a single day in your life you will never starve or be homeless. Why on earth would I pity you?’

She stares at me as if she can’t believe I mean what I say.

‘In fact, I wish I had half of what you have,’ I tell her honestly.

‘No you don’t.’

‘Actually I do. Do you know that you are luckier than anyone else I know? Everything falls into your lap. Designer clothes and shoes, music classes, expensive holidays. You just have to open your mouth and ask for it and it’s yours. It’s not like that for me. I’ve had to take summer jobs to get the things I want. When I go back I’ll have to take out a student loan just to complete my studies. A debt that I will spend a great deal of my working life paying back.’

She doesn’t say anything, but I can see she is thinking about what I said.

‘When I was young my dad told me a story and it kind of changed the way I thought about things. You want to hear it?’

‘Yes, please,’ she says quickly.

‘It was about this set of twins. One of them was an eternal optimist. No matter how bad the situation he would find a reason to be happy, and the other was the eternal pessimist. He would do the opposite and find something to be sad about no matter how good the situation was.

‘So one day their father decided to see if he could change their attitudes. On the boys’ birthday he filled the pessimist’s room with every imaginable toy. He practically bought his son a toy store. Then he filled the optimist’s room with donkey dung. Just a big stinking pile of dung right in the middle of the poor kid’s room. When the boys came home from school the father said, ‘Boys your birthday presents are in your rooms.’

‘The pessimist ran into his room and began to berate his father for buying so many toys. He complained and cried about how he would never have enough time to play with all of them. In the other room the optimist began skipping around the dung heap, laughing. ‘Woo hoo,’ he sang happily. ‘There’s a pony around. There’s a pony around.’

Britney laughs. ‘I’d like to be the pony boy in your story. He’s cute.’

‘You could be,’ I tell her softly.

‘Thanks for the story. It’s a good one.’

‘You’re welcome.’ I look at my watch. ‘I have to go. My aunt will be waiting for me. Let’s talk again when I get back on Sunday, OK?’

‘OK,’ she says slowly.

I start to walk to the door.

‘Tori,’ she calls. ‘I’m sorry you have to take out a student loan just to finish your studies.’

I smile at her. ‘It’s OK. Most people have to, Brit. Just be grateful for everything you have.’

‘My brother likes you, you know.’

‘What? Why?’ Whoa, that had come out like high pitched squeaks. I clear my throat. ‘Er … what makes you say that?’

‘Everybody knows you only get pushed into the water by a girl who’s jealous of you, or a guy who has the hots for you.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you like my brother?’

‘Um … I never really thought about it.’

‘Really? Most girls can’t stop thinking about him.’

‘Well, he must be very bored of it all then.’ I look at my watch. ‘I should get going.’

‘Have a nice time with your aunt.’

‘I will. You have a lovely lunch with your dad.’

‘Bye.’

‘Bye.’