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Cucumber slices go beneath in a ring. Lettuce is piled in the middle, with pepper
rings crowning them. Her pizza slices are on another plate because she screams if hot food touches cold food. She eats the salad first, then the pizza. There’s something hypnotic about
watching her. She’s been doing this for three or four years in exactly the same way and the repetitiveness pulls me back to another room, another house, another life.
    I’m Lou . . . and I’m happy . . . safe . . . no worries . . . my world is turning as it should . . .
    ‘Are you OK – Holly?’ Mum asks sharply. There’s that unnatural moment’s pause between her breath in to speak and her actually saying my name. It brings me back. My
world tilts on its axis again.
    ‘Just tired. Today was kind of stressful.’
    Katie nibbles on a cucumber slice now the tomatoes are gone.
    Mum makes a sympathetic face. ‘Of course. It’ll be easier tomorrow, darling. But I’ll run you a nice hot bath after dinner and you can have a relaxing soak.’
    Mum firmly believes that bubble bath can cure most ills and it’s only when I see her pouring the last of her Molton Brown foam under the hot tap that I realise she knows how stressed I was
about my first day in the new school. Every Christmas, Dad buys her a hamper with those bath gels, but not the last one. That Christmas was marked by a few hastily wrapped presents and a pub lunch,
followed by afternoon TV in a strange house in Devon surrounded by cardboard boxes. We tried to be cheerful, but we’re a family who love the old rituals: the patchwork stockings with our
names cross-stitched on the top, hung at the foot of the bed; gathering round the tree in the morning with coffee and OJ and croissants to open our presents; the pre-lunch walk to get out of
Mum’s way while she does the last preparations in peace; Dad’s stupid festive CDs playing in the background all day. These are the things that make it Christmas, that make us safe and
secure and at home.
    Away from the familiar patterns, Christmas Day felt like walking a rope bridge over a waterfall. I finally understood how Katie must feel when we break her routine. I hugged my sister extra hard
that day.
    ‘Ready, darling,’ Mum calls as I collect my bathrobe.
    ‘I could have done it myself.’ I’m guilty that she’s wasting her time on me when she has so much to do herself.
    She strokes my hair. ‘I know, but a little pampering after a hard day never hurt anyone.’
    Mum always could read me better than anyone. I smile a thank you and hook my robe on the bathroom door. She closes it quietly behind me and the scent of ginger and some flower I don’t
recognise envelops me. I sink into the warm water gratefully and inhale the aroma. Mum’s right – a long soak in expensive bubbles does make the world seem a better place for a
while.
    I breathe in and out, and in and out, letting the scent and the warmth calm me until I feel boneless and floaty. When I close my eyes, the smell transports me back to my old bathroom: the
en-suite with its cool, tiled floor, heated chrome towel rail with soft fluffy towels waiting. I pretend I’m there. It’s wrong, I know, but I can’t resist. Today was my hardest
ever day of being Holly. Maybe because it was my first day alone? I don’t know. I just know I’m sick of her.
    I breathe in. I breathe out.
    I’m Lou again now. Holly’s put to sleep. When I get out of the bath and pad through on to the white carpet in my bedroom, I’ll turn on my netbook and check out my Facebook
page. Listen to the latest YouTube tracks that Kirsten’s linked to. Flick through Talia’s photo uploads. See who’s changed their relationship status, and who’s written what
on their wall, while I dry off and lounge on the bed.
    And I can’t wait to do it. The bolt of elation at the thought of it is like an electric shock. I splash around with the soap hastily and wash my hair in record time. I hop out of the bath,