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a shaky breath that felt like ice in her nostrils. Then the estate agent said, “That won’t be necessary. You do own your home.” He looked back at Susan. “Don’t worry, young lady, everything’s in hand.”
    He meant that she was only ten years old, she couldn’t be expected to understand these things. All she had achieved was to make sure they would take no more notice of her. She sat in the office among posters of smiling couples with keys to their new homes and watched helplessly as the estate agent asked Mummy questions and filled in a form, passed it to her, waited while she read it, and handed her a pen. Mummy’s signature was loud and scratchy. Susan felt as if she were already back in the cold empty flat, as if she hadn’t left it and never would.
    Mummy hired a taxi to Euston, to celebrate. Their carriage on the train was empty, which Mummy always liked. “Lots of room,” she said, which made Susan think of the windowless space that would be her bedroom, not even half the size of hers at home. Soon the train was gathering speed toward Liverpool: the lit streets flew away, the nighttime fields flooded by like ink, until they turned gray with snow. “You’ll like it when we move,” Mummy said, “I promise.”
    “I don’t want to.” She was near to tears. “Why have we got to move?”
    “Because I want a change. I don’t want to be stuck in Wallasey for the rest of my life, and neither should you. London is where the opportunities are. Perhaps we won’t have to stay there forever. But you’ll like it, it’ll be an adventure. You wait and see.”
    A town glinted beyond the glowing fields and was doused by a sudden fall of snow that must have been a hill. The train was rocking Mummy to sleep. Now her eyes were closed and moving behind her eyelids, as if they were watching something Susan couldn’t see. That was supposed to happen when you were dreaming—but Mummy said she never dreamed. The sight of her eyes shifting in sleep, out of control, made Susan even more anxious for her. She couldn’t be dreaming, for dreaming was wrong. Susan didn’t know why, but it was.
    She remembered the time half her life ago, when Mummy had kept demanding over breakfast if she had been dreaming. “I don’t want you dreaming, that’s all,” she’d said as if that was reassuring, but for years Susan had been scared to go to sleep in case a dream carried her away. She’d felt them waiting for her in the dark where her night-light couldn’t reach. The sight of Mummy lolling as the empty carriage swayed made her feel nervous and alone. She jumped up and went to the buffet car.
    The can of Coke took most of the money in her purse. She sipped it and stared at Mummy and thought that at least Mummy was sleeping all night these days, she’d said so. Just a few nights ago she’d frightened Susan awake by shouting incomprehensibly in her sleep, and Susan hadn’t dared go in and wake her. Why, that had been the night before she’d said they were going to London, and Susan wished now that she’d wakened her, though she didn’t know what use that would have been.
    Susan looked out at the gray glow that was sailing by at a hundred miles an hour. It made her feel sleepy too. She gulped her Coke so that the fizzing in her nose would keep her awake, and then she was coughing and spluttering as loo much went up her nose. She would have covered her mouth while she coughed, except that suddenly she hoped her coughing would wake Mummy up. Mummy didn’t even stir. Susan coughed and wept and fumbled her handkerchief out of her sleeve. She drew a deep breath and gave in to a last fit of coughing while she kept her eyes shut and wished fiercely that when she opened them she would see Mummy awake. At last she looked, but Mummy hadn’t moved. She looked out the window again but had to dab her eyes before she could make out the speeding fields. And the face looking in at her.
    She cried out, more loudly when Mummy didn’t