I get ready and tidy my room, ready to go to college where I’ll listen to teachers and hang out with my friends and act all normal and stuff, as if everything is right with the world when in reality, it’s far from that. Not with having Alice around. Not until I find out who she is. And what it is she wants from us.

Even going out and seeing Josh didn’t make me feel any better. We might see one another again or we might not. My heart isn’t in it right now. The timing is all wrong. I’m losing the relationship I had built up with Dad. I’m losing him to Alice and I’m not prepared to sit back and let that happen. Not now. Not ever. And not to her. We need to stick together, Dad and me. We have a bond. Something that ties us together. It’s just that he doesn’t know it.

I pack up my bag and stop for a second, looking around at my room, before closing the door and heading off to college.

36ALICE

In the last few days, Jack has handed me just short of £1,500. I have told him that it’s not enough for me to keep silent about his little habit and yesterday, I threatened to pay the headteacher a visit, telling him that if they didn’t take me seriously then I would alert social services to what goes on behind the closed doors of this purportedly decent house.

Today, I am expecting a larger payment, something substantial that will keep me from passing on the photograph to the relevant authorities.

‘Still no Mrs Downey, eh?’ I smile as he opens the door and I bustle my way inside. ‘Or is she back from her little break and is resting up after all the stress of packing and unpacking? She must be exhausted, poor thing.’

He glares at me, hatred oozing out of every pore. I’m pushing my luck now. I know it but can’t seem to help myself. Naughty me. We are past the social niceties phase now, beyond being pleasant and enduring forced conversations that go nowhere. There is little point in pretending we are anything other than arch enemies.

‘Elizabeth is still away. She has extended her stay which is probably for the best given your presence in the house and your unreasonable demands. I want you gone when she arrives back. We’ll manage just fine without you.’

Fionn comes running through, throwing his arms around me and pushing his face into my midriff as I bend down to greet him.

‘Yes,’ I say, looking up at Jack, enjoying the anger in his expression. ‘I can see that you’ll manage perfectly in my absence. Fionn will be delighted to see the back of me, won’t he?’

The young lad looks up at me, doe-eyed and perplexed. ‘Where are you going, Alice? You have to take me if you’re going somewhere! Can I go with you?’

‘Fionn, go and finish getting ready for school. Tell Yasmin to get ready as well.’ Jack’s voice is gruff, weighted with hatred and resentment.

The little boy pulls away from me reluctantly and traipses upstairs out of view, Jack’s eyes fixed on his son before moving nearer to me. He steps closer, shoving an envelope in my hand, his voice a rumbling whisper. ‘Here. This is the fucking last. I am done with you. Take your money and fuck off out of our lives. This is your last day in this house. I don’t want to see you here tomorrow or any day after that. If you try to come in, I’ll call the police.’

I step back and widen my eyes dramatically. ‘Really? Are you sure about that? Maybe while the police are here, I can show them the photo, tell them about my little find and your filthy little habit. I’m sure they’ll be very interested in what you get up to in your spare time. Let’s see how your business copes once word gets about, eh?’

Jack shakes his head and laughs, his eyes crinkling up at the corners as he watches me closely. ‘Oh, Alice, you think you know everything when in actual fact, you know nothing at all. You don’t have a clue, do you? Not a bloody clue. You are utterly blind to it all.’ His cut glass accent rings off every wall, every bare, polished surface.

I scrutinise his every move, wondering what the hell he is talking about. He continues to laugh, looking at me as if I am a piece of dirt stuck on the underside of his shoe.

‘Where do you think Elizabeth really is? Come on, Little Miss Know-It-All. You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? I mean, do I really have to spell it out for you? Why do you think that packet was hidden behind those books? If it was mine, do you not think I would have locked it away in my study? How often did Elizabeth go in the library? Go on, think about it. Have a guess. Where is the one place I could hide something from her? Not my workplace. She has keys for that room. She would have found it in a heartbeat.’

A pattering sensation thrums in my chest, crawling up my neck, growing and accelerating until it is pounding in my ears. I think about Jack’s words, the look on his face, and Elizabeth’s prolonged absence and everything suddenly slots into place.

‘Yes,’ he says, watching me closely for my reaction, nodding and smiling as realisation dawns somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain. ‘Now you’ve got it. Took a while but you got there in the end, didn’t you? Poor, dim Alice. You know everything and at the same time, so little.’

‘Elizabeth isn’t at a spa at all,’ I say more to myself than anything. ‘She’s in rehab.’ My voice sounds disembodied, rattling around in my head. I didn’t see that one coming. I’ve been remiss to not pick up on that fact. Anger at my own stupidity scores at my skin, little blisters of shame at my own stupidity burning at my flesh.

‘Bingo.’ Jack’s eyes are glistening. He’s enjoying this. My threats about exposing this family, however, still stand.

‘That won’t stop me going to the police and the school and telling them what a bad mother Elizabeth is, how she takes drugs while the children are in the house.’

‘She’s in fucking rehab, Alice. She is no longer here so is no longer a threat. I’m as clean as a whistle. Test me and you’ll find nothing. What reason has anybody got to take the children from us? You really think the school is going to start smearing our name when we pay them tens of thousands to educate our children? Get real.’ He crosses his arms and steps away from me, looking me up and down as if I am a lab specimen about to be dissected solely for his pleasure. ‘I have to admit, at first you got me. I panicked and handed over that money but after giving it some serious thought, I’ve decided that enough is enough. A shitty little gold digger like you doesn’t scare me. Who are people going to believe anyway – a sour-faced little nobody like you or a professional, successful businessman like me?’

I open the envelope and stare down at its contents – a letter telling me that my services are no longer required. The letterhead is that of a firm of lawyers with Jack’s signature at the bottom. No money. Not a fucking penny.

‘Yes, it’s empty. As you can see, you’ll not get anything else out of me. Your little game is up. I’ve packed up your measly belongings and stacked them in the utility room. Now if you wouldn’t mind collecting them, you can be on your way.’ He sounds triumphant. His skin has taken on a golden hue, flushed with a tinge of pink. The complexion of somebody who has hit the jackpot. The complexion of a winner.

A noise comes from upstairs: a creak followed by the sound of somebody running. Fionn comes barging into the hallway, his face lined with anxiety. ‘Daddy, it’s Yasmin! She’s been sick all over the bedroom floor.’

I stand rooted to the spot, enjoying the concern and disgust on Jack’s face. I make no attempt to move, to race up there and clean it up. Instead, I wait, savouring the power that is rising within me. I doubt that Jack Downey has ever had to clean up anything in his life, especially piles of vomit.

‘I presume you’ll be gone by the time I get back down here?’ He raises an eyebrow, and without giving me a chance to reply, he disappears upstairs, his footfall heavy and clumsy, borne out of anger at having to actually care for his own children.

Fionn is staring up at me, his eyes wide and innocent. ‘Are you taking me to school? Yasmin can’t go. She’s sick.’

My chest expands, my heart throbbing wildly beneath my ribcage. ‘Yes, I am. Come on. Grab your coat and bag. We don’t want to bother Daddy, do we? He’s busy looking after your sister.’ I’m whispering now, my words fast and urgent.

Fionn smiles and scoops up his bag and coat that sit at the bottom of the stairs. We are out of the door and down the road in seconds, his little legs running to keep up with my hasty pace.

‘You’re going really fast, Alice!’ He giggles and I squeeze his hand tight and wink.

‘Well, I have a secret to tell you, but you mustn’t tell anybody because it’s just between the two of us.’ We turn right down Pendlestone Avenue and take a left onto Marsden Road where the streets are quieter and we can slow down.

‘A secret? I love secrets!’ He is almost squealing, his face full of joyful innocence. This boy. This wonderful, wonderful child. I wish he were mine.

I lean in to his ear, my voice a thin low whisper. ‘We’re not going to school today. Daddy said you can have a day off.’

‘Really?’ His brow is knitted, a small line of discontent settled deep in his skin. ‘Is that because Yasmin has been sick?’

‘Yes!’ I say excitedly. ‘He said that you can have a day off for being such a good boy all the time. That’s what we were talking about when you came down the stairs. Yasmin was going to have a day off as well but now she’s ill, she has to stay in bed and Daddy has to look after her.’

He thinks about this for a second or two, then seemingly satisfied with my explanation, smiles and skips along the road beside me, his little, hot hand firmly locked with mine.

I think about how it would feel to have my own child, to have somebody look up to me, to rely on me and for me to be their only carer. A warm sensation shifts and curls somewhere deep inside my gut, coiling around my muscles, settling in my bones. I would be everything they would ever need, always there for them, ready to attend to their every want and desire. They would love me unconditionally. I would have a family again, a proper family, somebody amenable and loving, not somebody who continually questions my movements, my decisions, my state of mind, reminding me how fragile I am, how close I am to tipping over into a void of madness.

An image of my young sister jumps into my mind, the way she splashed about in the bath while I crouched by her side watching her, her stricken expression as she slipped under the water, then the apportioned blame afterwards. The horror on the faces of my parents and the subsequent decision by the coroner that it was an accident, that there wasn’t enough evidence to say anything untoward took place, that I had possibly tried to save her and wasn’t necessarily responsible for her death. Her passing was the beginning of the end. The end of me. Everything took a downwards spiral from that point on. I was ten years old.

My life as an adult improved little. In the beginning, Phillip helped me, guided me through the perils of university, assisted me when I tried and failed to conceive a much-wanted child. I figured if I had a baby of my own, I could replace my sister, bring another child into the world to make up for the one who died. It didn’t happen. I sunk into depression. Phillip became tired of me and my demands. Tired of having to prop me up: be my carer as opposed to my husband. He turned to friends and colleagues for friendship and support. He turned to Sophia.

It wasn’t all bad. At one point before everything fell apart, my job as an assistant at the kindergarten was a really positive thing. It was a chance to better myself; there were opportunities for promotion, people I imagined were my friends. I thought it would help. And for a while, it did. But then one day, it didn’t. I lost that position after being there for just one year. They made erroneous claims that I had hurt a child, grabbed them, shook them about. Badly injured them. It was nonsense. I would never do such a thing but another staff member said they had seen me hit the youngster and so their decision was made, regardless of my protestations. No legal action was taken as they didn’t want the bad publicity, but what they did want was for me to leave with immediate effect. Which I did. I recall Phillip’s reaction, his despair. His elongated disappearances as he lost faith in me and slowly drifted into the arms of another woman…

I squeeze Fionn’s little hand. The way he looks at me, the trust he has in me and me alone, tells me everything I need to know. I realise at that point that I don’t need to take him back. He deserves better than being forced to live in that house with those cold, uncaring people. His mother is a drug user and his father an aloof, heartless individual who cares more about money and status than he does his own children. Fionn is better off with me. We’re friends, he and I. He will understand once I explain what is going on. I’ll tell him he’s having a sleepover at my house. We’ll get pizza and watch TV together. We will do fun things: thrilling, exhilarating things. He will love me and I will love him right back. Excitement fizzes inside me, warming my blood, settling and soothing my permanently frayed nerves.

‘Where are we going?’ His voice cuts into my thoughts, dragging me back to the present.

I look around. I have no idea where we are going. We have wandered aimlessly, dashing and running to be far away from the Downey house. In the distance, I spot the spire of St Martin’s church and feel drawn to it. The church where I attended the counselling session, the church where I met Peter. The church where the idea of Alice was initially born.

‘I’m going to show you something exciting.’

‘Are we going to get an ice cream? Is that where you’re taking me?’ The joy in his voice is like being immersed in a warm bath on a cold winter’s day. I shiver, my flesh tingling with delight.

‘In a while. First, I want you to see something. I think you’ll like it.’

We stroll along as if we haven’t got a care in the world. People pass us by and I wonder how many of them think that Fionn is my child. It makes me feel like a whole person, the thought that anybody would think such a thing. We fit well together, this boy and me. His parents don’t deserve him. I do. He makes me feel complete again. I can give him a much better life, provide him with the love and attention he lacks at home. One day, he will thank me. I have a sense for these things. Soon, he’ll forget all about his parents and his spoilt sister and will look to me and me only for comfort and happiness and I will be here for him – my little boy. My lovely Fionn.