‘Want a cup of tea, Dad?’ I ask.

‘Thanks, Laila.’ He looks a bit surprised.

I come to the table with two mugs and take a sip of mine.

‘When did you get a taste for tea?’ Dad laughs.

‘Since I did!’

‘Everything all right with Mum? She should be back from work soon. Funny! Mum starting work at your old primary and you starting secondary at the same time!’

Dad sips his tea and looks at me as if he’s waiting for me to say something.

‘Hang your blazer up, Laila.’ Dad picks up the plates and cups from breakfast that are still on the table, puts them in the sink and starts unloading the dishwasher. ‘We’ll need to help out a bit more around the place.’

‘Mum’s being weird . . . cleaning.’

‘That is suspicious behaviour! She told me she’d rearranged a few things.’ Dad looks towards the shelves a bit doubtfully. If anything, now that she’s shoved everything back on them all higgledy-piggledy, they look even messier than before.

‘Did Mum tell you I found the chime Nana Josie gave me?’ I ask, but I’m not sure he hears because he has this faraway look on his face. ‘Dad?’ I touch his arm. ‘Do you want to see it?’

‘Sorry, Laila, I was miles away.’ Dad kisses me on the forehead like he used to before bed when I was tiny. ‘I’d love to see that again. We hunted everywhere for that little rattle . . . I thought it was lost for good.’

‘It nearly was,’ I say, running upstairs. I unzip the cushion cover and feel around for the chime. It doesn’t look like a rattle. No one would ever let a baby put this in their mouth. Whoever gave it to Nana Josie when she was a baby definitely meant for someone to ring it for her . . . it’s a chime, not a rattle. I slide the letter about the Protest Book further into the cover and zip the cushion up again.

Dad walks up the stairs to find me. ‘Let’s see it then.’

I sit down on my perch and he sits next to me. He holds his hand out and, as I place the little chime in his palm, it rings. A smile spreads across Dad’s face.

‘Stars, moons and suns. Pretty!’ Dad yawns and leans his head back on the cushions and I lay my head on his chest. ‘I remember my mum asking us to give this to you,’ Dad says with his eyes closed.

The way he says ‘my mum’ makes him seem like a little boy. I’ve hardly ever thought about how Dad was when he was young.

When Mum comes back I make her some tea too.

‘How was work?’ Dad asks.

‘Tough,’ Mum says, putting some files down on the table. They say ‘Confidential’ on the front. ‘But once I’m back in the swing of it, it’ll be easier – the more I get to know the children. Some of them have quite complex needs. Anyway, I promised myself I wouldn’t bring it home.’

Dad looks at the pile of files on the other end of the table and raises his eyebrows.

Three is an odd number to sit around a long table that used to have at least five of us eating at it. Usually more with Mira and Krish’s friends and sometimes Kez too. Dad’s cooked way too much food.

‘We’ll never eat that much,’ I tell him as he ladles some into my bowl.

‘Yes . . . and I met one of Mira’s flatmates. Seemed really friendly . . . Punky-grungy type.’

‘That’s not a thing!’ I groan.

It’s going to be so boring around here without any proper banter.

‘Do we have to eat at the table every night?’ I ask.

Mum nods. ‘So, are you going to tell me about school?’

‘I like my tutor. I’ve told Dad about her already – I can’t be bothered to go over it again.’

Mum looks disappointed. ‘Tell me one thing you learned,’ she asks.

‘I’m not at primary any more!’ I sigh.

Mum pulls a begging face and holds one finger up.

I give in. ‘Lingala is a language that millions of people speak in Africa.’

‘Which countries in Africa? Never heard of it!’ Dad says, looking it up on his phone. It’s so brilliant how they ask me a question and then don’t believe what I’m saying.

‘You interested in Geography?’ Mum asks.

‘It was in tutor time. A girl called Carmel speaks it.’

‘Here we go. It’s spoken in Angola, Congo . . .’

‘She’s from Cameroon,’ I say. ‘Can we not talk about school now?’

‘Fair enough. You must be tired. Oh! I’ve got you a remedy for your eczema and some cream.’ Mum takes a little pot of cream and a little glass tube of her white sugary homeopathy pills out of her bag. She taps one into the lid and tips it on to my tongue. ‘Take another in the morning. Let me have a look at your skin.’

‘Stop fussing, Mum.’ I hold out my arm and she smoothes the cream over it.

‘This should soothe it at night especially.’

When I hear Mum and Dad switching their lights out later, I drag my duvet out to the landing. I feel inside the ruby-coloured cushion for the chime and I take out the letter from Nana Josie’s friend and read it over and over again . . . What difference would it make to anyone if I went to pick up the Protest Book, instead of Mira?

Is it always wrong to lie?

Is it always right to tell the truth?

I could just say to Mira that the book arrived by post, and give it to her when she gets home. She probably wouldn’t even be that bothered if I read it. She’s got loads of things of Nana’s after all. Maybe Mrs Latif’s ‘Connected Lands’ category isn’t just about countries in the world; maybe it means the lands of the past too. Everyone else in this family seems to have a connection to Nana Josie except me. I look at the address on the letter. It’s not that far. Would it be that wrong of me to go and pick the book up myself?

‘Is this sleeping-on-the-landing thing some kind of protest, Laila?’ Dad asks, picking up Simon’s letter to Mira. I must have fallen asleep reading it.

I snatch it off him before he can read anything.

‘What’s that you were reading?’

‘Nothing,’ I say – but why did he ask me that? How can sleeping on the landing be a protest? ‘Protest about what?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know, Laila, you tell us. Krish and Mira going away? Starting secondary school? Or is all this feeling so unsettled something to do with Kez?’

He waits for a minute for me to answer, and when I don’t he sighs.

‘Well, if you want to talk . . .’

‘I don’t,’ I jump in, before he can say any more.

‘You’d better get ready for school then.’ He sighs and carries on down the stairs.

I tiptoe down the first three steps and sit on the stairs so I can hear Mum and Dad talking.

‘She’s curled up on that sofa like a frightened little kitten.’

Is that what Dad really thinks about me?

‘She was reading a letter, but she wouldn’t tell me about it.’

‘Yes, there was something she was looking at from Kez the other day . . . I wish I knew what was going on between those two,’ Mum chips in.

‘Don’t get involved, Uma – whatever it is, they’ve got to sort it out for themselves.’

Now I can’t hear much . . . except for one word: ‘puberty’. It’s such a vile word. I suppose it serves me right for eavesdropping. I cringe, cringe and cringe some more at the thought of Mum and Dad talking about me like that. I hate this house without Mira and Krish in it.

After Dad’s gone to work, Mum runs around getting her things together and keeps asking me the same questions over and over again: ‘Have you eaten enough breakfast? Sure you’ve got everything?’ She straightens my tie and puts my gym bag by the door even though I’ve told her we don’t have PE today.

‘Set off in twenty minutes!’ she tells me as she runs out of the door.

I can’t stand all the fussing around.

I’m actually glad she goes into her school before me now.