Left of the Bang. Claire Lowdon

      ‘Darling, she just wants to play with you.’

      ‘Harriet, quick, there’s a fire at the chocolate factory!’ James yelled, waving his hands to signify flames. ‘Nee-naw nee-naw nee-naw!’

      ‘Shut your gob, James,’ said Sophie.

      ‘Sophie!’ Mrs Witrand raised her voice. ‘I’ve told you before, I won’t have you using that unkind expression.’

      Harriet started to cry; James’s flailing elbow had caught her on the side of her head.

      ‘Right!’ shouted Mr Witrand. ‘Sleeping Lions, the lot of you!’

      For a moment, Sophie considered objecting to the childishness of this, but the idea of closing her eyes and disappearing from the chaos of siblings and parents was very appealing. She leaned her head against her seatbelt strap and tried to get comfortable.

      Next thing she knew, she was being gently shaken awake by her father.

      ‘Sophie, Sophie, we’re here.’

      He was squatting in the gravel driveway outside the West Wing, his face just level with hers. Francis Witrand was tall and lanky with prominent knees. He favoured brown deck shoes without socks, and Aertex polo shirts in navy blue and racing green. His perfectly round, tortoiseshell spectacles never came off, even when he was in the sea.

      ‘Well, I reckon you won that round,’ he smiled. ‘You didn’t even hear us taking the bags in, did you?’ He helped her gently to her feet. ‘James and Harriet are in the kitchen – I think they’re waiting for you.’

      ‘Why?’ Sophie was confused. Then she remembered. ‘Oh, that.’ Usually, Sophie led her siblings in an inventory of their favourite things: the big bed in the girls’ room, with the enormous scrolled footboard that made it feel like a ship; a chipped rocking horse with real horse hair in its tail; the old bread oven in the kitchen wall, where James had once hidden during their most epic game of hide-and-seek; the picnic tree, a hollow oak in the garden big enough for all three of them to fit inside.

      ‘Actually, I think I’d rather just go and unpack,’ Sophie told her father. ‘Tell the others they can do it without me this time.’ She scrunched across the gravel to the house, her puffy nipples chafing from the friction of her T-shirt. It felt hot between her legs, and a little bit itchy.

      In the bedroom, she lay down on the big ship-bed and took out her mp3 player. Sophie’s parents disapproved of all pop music expect those bands with ‘real musical merit’, which amounted to Sting, Dory Previn and the Beatles. Sophie selected track 09 on The Best of the Beatles