The young carers’ group is held in the local family centre and the heating is on full blast. I am pleased. It’s the second week of November, the evenings are getting colder and I hate being cold. I hesitate in the doorway. Dad dropped me off, but I didn’t want him to come in. He keeps offering to do things with me, but I know it’s because he’s making an effort and that makes me not really believe he wants to, so I feel cross – and that makes me say no when he offers. I know it’s unreasonable of me, but I can’t help it.

There are two adults in the room – a man and a woman – and three kids. There’s a table set out with painting things on it, and in that moment I decide to turn and run. I don’t want to paint. Mum painted.

But it’s too late. The woman has seen me. ‘Hello!’ she says cheerfully, and heads over. ‘Are you Calypso?’

I nod.

She smiles. She’s younger than I expected, and she has long brown hair tied back in a plait. ‘I’m Abby. Come and join us.’

I smile back, and she walks me into the room.

‘This is Raj.’

The man grins at me. He looks a bit older than Abby, but not by much.

‘Hi, Calypso. This probably feels kind of freaky to you at the moment. Don’t worry. Just go with the flow, okay?’

I nod, wondering what on earth that means. Go with what flow? What will we be doing?

‘Not everyone is here yet,’ Abby tells me. ‘We should have another three any minute.’ She introduces me to the three kids who are already there. Lisiella and Krystal are girls, a bit younger than me I think. They look like they’ve known each other for a long time, since one of them is doing the other’s hair. They smile at me in between excited discussions about a pop band I’ve never heard of. The third is a boy, Reece, leaning against the window, thumbs flying over his mobile phone. He doesn’t even look up.

‘Everyone who comes to the group is a carer,’ Abby tells me. ‘When they’re at home, they have to do adult things, like cooking and cleaning and making sure their mum or dad takes medication. Here they can switch all that off and be kids for an hour.’

‘Oh,’ I say, like I understand, but I’m not sure I do. Do I have to switch part of myself off? How do I do that?

Raj glances at the clock on the wall. ‘We could get started,’ he says, and Abby nods.

‘Might as well. The others will come when they can.’

I feel a bit surprised. They don’t seem cross that the other three kids are late. At school it would matter.

We sit down at the big table, and Abby explains what we’re going to do. ‘We’ve got some wooden photo frames,’ she says, holding one up. ‘And lots of different colours of paint. So you can do whatever design you like – either for yourself, or as a present for someone else. Maybe think about if one of your friends or relatives has a birthday coming up.’

Lisiella and Krystal make excited squeaking noises and immediately reach for brushes and paints. Reece is still looking at his phone.

‘Put that away now, mate,’ Raj tells him gently.

For a moment I think that Reece is going to ignore him, since he doesn’t show any sign that he’s heard. But then he puts his phone in his pocket and stares at the table.

‘I’m no good at painting,’ he says gruffly.

‘Everyone can paint,’ Abby says. ‘You can paint the whole frame blue if you like. It doesn’t have to have patterns on it.’ She smiles at me. ‘Got an idea of what you want to do?’

‘Er …’ I say. I’m not sure that ‘walk out of the door’ is one of the options.

A girl with the longest plait I’ve ever seen comes running in. ‘Sorry! Mum dropped all her tablets on the floor and I had to find them before the cat ate them.’

Lisiella and Krystal giggle, and the girl glares at them.

‘It’s not funny! The last time the cat ate one of her tablets, she had to have her stomach pumped at the vet and it cost ninety quid!’

Lisiella and Krystal immediately sober up.

‘Ooh,’ says Lisiella. ‘That’s criminal.’

‘That’s why my dad says we can’t have any pets,’ says Krystal. ‘They cost way too much.’

‘Come and sit down,’ says Abby, ‘and meet Calypso. Calypso, this is Lina.’

Lina says hi to me and then sits down at the table. ‘What are we doing?’

Over the next twenty minutes, I paint my photo frame. Two more boys join us – Tyler, and someone whose name I don’t catch. They do a lot of play-fighting and tip over two of the paint pots, which annoys Krystal. ‘Now I’ll have to wash this!’ she exclaims, staring at her skirt, which has a big red splodge on it. ‘And it won’t be dry by tomorrow! You idiots!’ They apologise, and Abby promises to help Krystal remove the paint once it’s dried.

I choose yellow for my frame, and paint the whole thing the same colour, filling in any imperfections in the wood with extra dabs of paint. There’s glitter too, and I sprinkle gold over the yellow as evenly as I can.

‘That looks lovely,’ says Abby. ‘Like sunshine or happiness.’

I freeze. Happiness – my mother’s painting, the one that was in the exhibition at the National Gallery. The picture that’s all yellow with glitter sprinkles on it. I feel cold all over. I didn’t even realise that’s what I was doing.

‘I love painting, don’t you?’ asks Lisiella cheerfully.

I realise she’s talking to me. ‘Er,’ I say. ‘It’s all right. I prefer reading.’

Lisiella looks sceptical. ‘Reading?’ she echoes. ‘You like it?’

‘Yes. Why, don’t you?’

She shakes her head. ‘What’s it for?’

I am nonplussed. No one has ever asked me this question before. What is reading for?

Abby is looking at me. I wonder if she knows how to answer, but she doesn’t say anything. Instead she gives me an encouraging smile.

I say to Lisiella, ‘Reading is for everything. You can go places you can’t in real life. You can be people you’re not. You can do things you wouldn’t be allowed to do.’

Lisiella stares very hard at her picture frame. ‘I don’t need reading for any of that stuff,’ she says. ‘I go round to my friend’s house and play on her DS.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I’ve never done that.’

‘You’ve never played on a DS?’ says Lisiella. She sounds disbelieving.

‘No.’

‘What about an Xbox?’

‘No.’

‘A Wii?’

I feel a bit nervous. I’m not really sure what one of those is. It sounds like a made-up name. Is she testing me? Will she laugh if I say the wrong thing? ‘I haven’t played any video-game … things,’ I say.

Now everyone else around the table is looking at me, amazed.

‘You’re joking,’ says Reece.

‘You must have played something,’ says Krystal. ‘Everyone’s played something.’

‘I’ve played games on computer,’ I say desperately. I have, but only the ones at school that are educational.

The others shake their heads.

‘They’re rubbish,’ declares Reece. ‘You should play Grand Theft Auto.’

Attention immediately switches. Krystal demands to know when she can come round to his house and have a go, and Lisiella shouts that no one should be playing it because it’s too violent and anyway he’s too young. Lina says she’s heard that video games make people violent and Reece snorts and says he’s never killed anyone so she’s talking rubbish.

I look down at my hands, seeing dabs of yellow paint on my fingers, and feel hot and cold. Am I really so different from everyone else, even here? Christopher has a tablet thing that he plays games on, but Mae and I are always too busy writing our stories or reading books. Have I missed out on something absolutely vital to my life?

Raj clears his throat. ‘I think that’s enough of that,’ he says. ‘Time to chat.’

The others, still arguing over video games, get up and bring their chairs into a space on the other side of the room, forming a circle. I do the same, unsure.

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ Abby tells me. ‘We always have a bit of circle time. It helps to share our worries and our problems with people who understand.’ She sees my face. ‘You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.’

I breathe out in relief.

Lina goes first. ‘I took Mum back to see the consultant yesterday. He wants to try her on these new drugs, which might help with her muscle spasms. They’ve got worse since the last relapse. She keeps knocking stuff over, and dropping things because she can’t grip them properly. I keep having to clear up after her.’ She heaves a big sigh. ‘But hopefully the new drugs will help, as long as she keeps taking them. She’s going through another phase of not wanting to take anything because she says the pills make her depressed.’

I am listening very quietly and intently. It sounds like Lina’s mum is really sick. My dad doesn’t have anything like that. Muscle spasms? Are they like cramp?

‘Lina’s mum has multiple sclerosis,’ Abby says to me, and I jump, startled.

‘Oh,’ I say. I don’t know what that is.

‘Do you need more help?’ Raj asks Lina. ‘Should I speak to Antonia?’

Lina has the same social worker as me! I don’t quite know why I’m surprised. I suppose they have lots of children to look after.

Lina shrugs. ‘Like what? She’s always so busy.’

Raj says, ‘She does her best.’

‘Yeah, I know. Too much work, that’s what my mum says. They’ve all got too much work. That’s why she’s never in the office.’ Lina pulls a face. ‘Got to make the best of it, don’t we?’

Krystal tells us that her mum managed to go to a job interview by herself, which doesn’t sound all that amazing to me until I realise that her mum is blind. And then Tyler tells us about his little brother passing his swimming certificate and how he’s really proud of him. Tyler’s dad has something called post-traumatic stress disorder after being in the army and his mum has depression. It sounds like there’s a lot of arguing in their house, and Tyler has three younger brothers that he looks after, getting them dressed and ready for school in the morning and everything. He’s the same age as me and worried about what will happen when he goes to secondary school, because he’ll have to catch a bus that leaves earlier than his brothers have to leave for their school.

Lisiella complains that her dad won’t let her have a mobile phone. Reece says nothing.

‘Calypso, did you want to tell us a bit about yourself?’ Abby asks me kindly.

But I can’t. How can I? What problems do I have compared with the others? And how can I possibly tell them that my dad has been keeping lemons on bookshelves? How would people who play Xboxes and don’t read books react to that extreme weirdness?

I shrink back in my chair and shake my head. The others look a bit disappointed, except Reece, who has pulled his phone out of his pocket again.

Abby and Raj get out some games, and I play Snap with Lisiella, Krystal and Lina until it’s time to go home.

‘See you next week,’ Abby and Raj say as I head out to find Dad’s car.

I smile and wave at them. It’s been a weird evening. Everyone there looks after their parents, and sometimes their brothers and sisters. It’s the wrong way round, really. The parents should be doing the looking-after. It’s like the children have to be the grown-ups.

Is that what I’ve been doing for Dad? Has our family life been the wrong way round ever since Mum died?