ll I want to do is crawl into bed and cry, but I can’t. The minute I open the front door I know things are about to get even worse.

Hugo’s lying in his basket with his chin on the edge. His eyebrows twitch unhappily and he immediately looks at the wall as if he’s blanking me. According to scientists, dogs can make approximately 100 facial expressions and it’s quite clear which one Hugo is using right now.

“Annabel?” I whisper. “Dad?”

There’s a long silence, so I put my bag down and tiptoe into the living room. Then I tiptoe into the kitchen, and the bathroom, and the garage, and the laundry room, and Annabel and Dad’s bedroom. It’s only when there’s nowhere else to tiptoe that I go into my own bedroom and find Dad sitting on the floor with his back against my chest of drawers.

He looks at me desolately. “You know,” he says, “for somebody so organised, you’re incredibly untidy.”

There are clothes everywhere: books strewn all over the floor, sweet wrappers across the bottom of the bed, teddybears stuck halfway behind the wardrobe, clothes scattered. He has a point. I’m just not sure it’s the most important one right now.

“Dad, where’s Annabel?”

“She’s gone.”

“What do you mean gone?”

“She’s gone, is what I mean. She’d gone by the time I got your message and managed to get back to the house. She took her bags with her and the cat.”

“But why?”

Dad shrugs. “It was her cat.”

“No, why did she leave?”

Dad reaches into his pocket. “She wrote this.” And he hands me a yellow Post-it.

 

Then he pulls out the article from the newspaper. “This was next to it.”

I stare at it, my heart making little sputtering sounds. “This is all my fault.”

“Not really.”

“Of course it is, Dad. What else would she be talking about?”

“A couple of things maybe.” He reaches in his pocket and pulls out another piece of paper. “This was on the kitchen table too.”

It’s a letter from The Clothes Show lawyers, addressed to my parents.

“Dad, I…”And my voice breaks. “I’m sorry.”

The amount I’m saying that at the moment, maybe I should just get a little MP3 track with it on loop so that I can simply press a button and offer out earphones.

Dad shakes his head. “That’s not everything.” Then he looks at the carpet and rummages around in his pocket again. What he pulls out appears to be a tax form. More specifically a P45. “This was also on the table.”

I look at it in confusion.

“I’ve been lying too, Harriet. I didn’t get permission from work to come with you to Moscow.”

“But…”And when I look at him, I realise he’s been wearing the same clothes now for five days, he smells of vodka and he looks exhausted. In fact, he’s looked exhausted all week. I’ve just been too wrapped up in myself to notice.

“I don’t understand, Dad. Why not?”

“Because I didn’t need to, sweetheart. The agency lost their biggest client because of me and they fired me on Friday. On the spot.”

“But you said…”

“I know. I lied. I thought Annabel would be angry.”

“Oh.”

“It turns out she’s much, much angrier now.”

It feels like the whole world has tilted up on itself and everything is falling off the top of it. “Oh,” I say again.

“Yeah. Oh pretty much sums it up for me too,” Dad agrees and then he lies down on the carpet. “We’re not very good at this, are we, Harriet?” he says.

And he closes his eyes.

 

It’s only once I’ve helped him up and put him in front of the TV that I turn the yellow Post-it over.