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are,” he said, but the side road was out of sight before he turned along a garden path through a gateway without a gate.
    The house looked just like all the others with four stories to Susan, and she could imagine not being able to find it, wandering the maze of streets until it was too dark to see. Someone had been painting something on the patchy lawn, for there was an oblong yellow outline on the grass. Apart from that and the cars parked nose to tail alongside both pavements, there was no sign of life in the street. “I suppose that isn’t too far,” was all Mummy said.
    When the estate agent unlocked the door, a smell of dust and cats came out of the house. Circles of black water marked the linoleum in the gloomy hall, the stair carpet turned into another carpet halfway up the first flight, under bare lightbulbs that hung on crooked cords. Mummy strode in. “It’s the second floor, isn’t it?” she said.
    All the stairs creaked. The first floor smelled of old boiled cabbage, the second floor stank of cats and what they did. Two doors faced each other across the narrow landing, in the muddy glow from the skylight above the top floor. Once he’d unlocked the left-hand door, the estate agent stood aside, and Susan wondered if he was ashamed to go in.
    The large bare room had been made smaller by a partition wall in which a doorway was hung with plastic streamers. A cracked Donald Duck mug sat on the mantelpiece above the gas fire. Pieces of brown carpet had been stuck together to cover the floor; in places they were curling up. Apart from the partition, the walls were papered with a floral pattern. All the flowers were too big for the room.
    Mummy pushed through the plastic streamers. “Oh, look, Susan, there’s a little hall.”
    It was more like a box, with just enough room for two people abreast, and it was very dark. Another set of streamers hid the kitchen, a narrow room with a grimy cooker and a stained sink unit. Two shaky doors led off the hall, to a bathroom where the toilet was squeezed between the wall and the bath and to a windowless space that must be the bedroom, since the pale shape of a vanished double bed took up half the bare floor. “It’s snug, isn’t it?” Mummy said, dragging at a frayed string until the bedroom light came on. “We don’t really need all that space at home for just the two of us. What do you think? Do you like it?”
    How could she even ask? “No!” Susan cried.
    Mummy looked bewildered, then determined. “Well, I’m sure you will once we settle in.”
    Susan glimpsed how surprised the estate agent was in the moment before he controlled his face. She felt as she had the first time she’d realized that something was wrong with Mummy, that all she could do was love her and pretend she hadn’t noticed and hope that Mummy would get better. She’d thought that Mummy had, but now Mummy was saying, “Can we go back so I can sign the lease?”
    Wind twanged the aerials of parked cars and made the bare trees squeal. A wet newspaper with a staring face sailed across two gardens, caught on a gatepost, and struggled there until the face tore in half. As Mummy and the estate agent strode heads down into the wind, Susan lagged behind. She was trying to slow them down while she tried desperately to think of a way to stop Mummy from signing the lease.
    Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to find it when they got back to the office. Perhaps Mummy wouldn’t have enough cash with her—there must be something to pay. If only there were someone with them to tell Mummy to think it over, sleep on it—and then she had it. “Will Daddy have to sign too?”
    Mummy glared at her as the estate agent hesitated. “Forgive me,” he said, “I understood you were divorced.”
    “So I am.” She sounded proud of it, and furious with Susan. “I can show you the papers next time I come down if you like.”
    At least that would cause a delay, give Susan time to think of something else. She drew