Dad is doing more things around the house. I come home one day to find he’s hoovered the bedrooms. I can’t remember the last time he did that. And there’s food in the fridge. It’s not food that’s very good for you – there are a lot of ready meals – but at least I don’t have to wonder what I’m going to eat every day.

He seems a bit lost, though. He drifts from room to room, moving things from one place to another and then back again. Now that he’s finished his book, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. He switched on his computer the other day and I saw there were three new emails from a publisher, offering him some work on new manuscripts. But he just sighed when he saw them and switched the computer off without replying.

When I get home from school, we go to the kitchen together, where he makes me a mug of tea and asks me how school was.

‘Fine,’ I say, and then we sit in an awkward silence for a while.

‘So,’ I say, ‘what have you done today?’

He draws a breath, as though it’s an effort. ‘I cleaned the bathroom,’ he says. ‘But we’d run out of bleach, so I went to the shop. I wasn’t sure what scent to get. I hope you like lavender.’

I shrug. ‘It’s all right.’

He says, ‘Well, it was that or … lemon.’

I bite my lip, staring at my mug of tea and deliberately burning my palms on it.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to say that word. Er … then I came home, and I tried to make some soup. I found a nice recipe for potato and leek. But I forgot that our blender doesn’t work.’

This is all wrong. He doesn’t sound like himself.

‘Were you warm enough?’ he asks me. ‘Because it’s been cold out today, and I thought maybe you’d forgotten your gloves.’

Since when did my father talk about the weather? Who is this person? I don’t know how to talk to him.

I get up abruptly, slopping my tea slightly. ‘I’ve got homework to do,’ I say. ‘I’d better get on with it.’

‘Oh.’ His face falls in disappointment for a moment, before he forces a smile. ‘All right. Chicken and chips for dinner?’

‘Fine.’

I go to my room and stare at the walls. Will I get home one day to discover my house has turned into a regular three-bed, with a proper garden and a dog? Because the person downstairs is a complete stranger, so it wouldn’t surprise me if everything else changed as well.

If things change, will I change too?

If my father is no longer the same person, who am I?