While Ryan was at Aunt Annie’s, Mr Carter went back to Mr Carter’s flat. He was still troubled about Dionna. He took off the suit jacket and sat on Mr Carter’s not very comfy black leather sofa, wondering what to do. He tried watching TV, but not only was the screen quite tiny – all the series links were for channels called things like “History” and “Geographic” and “Natural”, so there wasn’t anything exciting recorded for him to watch.

Perhaps I should call Mum, he thought. She would know what’s best.

Then he realised he couldn’t do that. Or, at least, it would take a lot of explaining and she wouldn’t believe him. And even if she did he doubted that at the end of it she’d be very interested in answering the question, “So, anyway, what should I say to Dionna to make her like me again?”

He got up and rummaged through the fourteen cardboard pizza boxes strewn around the living room to see if there were any bits of delicious stuffed crust left. But since he’d already done this last night, there weren’t. He went back to the jacket, took out Mr Carter’s credit card and went over to the phone.

When he picked up the receiver, though, he wasn’t sure about ordering pizza again – he didn’t know how much money Mr Carter actually had in his bank account and he didn’t want to spend it all on pizza.

Plus it didn’t feel quite as thrilling and fun just to do it again. He suddenly had an image of him ordering pizza every night, stretching into the future, and it didn’t feel fun at all.

In truth, he wasn’t that hungry. He just felt a tiny bit lonely. He even thought to himself, looking at the boxes, ’Izza. Just because it was what his baby sister would have said. Or maybe ’izza ’ox. He’d like to have heard that. It would’ve made him laugh and cheered him up.

Then he noticed that on the main phone console there was a light blinking. Which meant there was a message for him. Well, not for him. For Mr Carter. So maybe he should ignore it.

But, then again, it was blinking. And Ryan felt a tiny bit lonely. At least it would be good hearing another voice. So he pressed the button.

“Hello …” said a worried-sounding female voice on the machine. “This is a message for Mr Carter.

It’s Zadie at St Winifred’s. Your mum has taken a bit of a turn for the worse, I’m afraid. She’s stable at the moment, but maybe you should come down as soon as you can. Thanks, all the best. Zadie. Oh, I said that already. Anyway, bye.”