A little while later the door opens a crack, and Esmeralda’s eye peeks at me. ‘What?’ she says.

‘Ivy said something about a car in ten minutes,’ I say.

Esmeralda lets the door drift open. ‘Can you get my boots from the wardrobe? The red ones.’

‘No,’ I say.

Esmeralda frowns. ‘You have to do what I tell you.’

‘Make me,’ I say.

‘Go get Rosie, she always helps me dress, and she likes to plait my hair,’ Esmeralda says and I tilt my head and make my face smooth and hard as a packing crate, coz my Ma never helps me dress. She never did anything special with Mags’s or my hair, but here she is doing it for a girl who’s not even family.

‘She says I have the prettiest hair in the world.’ Esmeralda shakes her head, making her hair slide like tractor oil, and smiles as if maybe she knows she’s getting to me, even though I’m standing here wearing my hardest packing crate face.

So I change it. I put on my super-cherry smile and stomp over to the door that’s half open, and inside is full of clothes hanging in rows, and racks of shoes. I grab the red boots, carry them back to Esmeralda.

‘Is this why you stopped me from leaving last night?’ I whisper it low, the way Ma does when she’s mad at me. ‘So I could run and fetch you all the things you’s too lazy to get yourself?’

‘I’m not lazy!’ she says.

I pull myself up taller than her and point my finger in her face. ‘Don’t you get in my way ever. You’ll be sorry.’ I throw the boots at her feet, which makes her jump, then I super-cherry smile for real and leave the room.

I’m at the top of the stairs when she calls out, ‘Peony!’ And it’s tiny and echoey, like a bat in the night.

I stop. But I don’t turn back.

She tiptoes across the rug behind me. ‘I stopped you because I’m afraid to go outside. When I saw you going over the wall, I couldn’t stop shaking. But also, I thought you could help make me not so afraid.’

I still don’t turn around; I just shrug. ‘Maybe I’ll help you, before I go,’ I say and run down the stairs.