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windowsill, she could see a half-eaten apple, the bitten surface brown and curling inwards. A fly had come through the window, and now circled briefly before resting beside the stalk. She watched it shift, pause, and take off as the silence was broken by a shout from downstairs. Victoria jumped off the bed and ran out on to the landing. Helen could hear her calling something back down; a moment later her head came around the edge of the door.
    ‘Pizza time!’
    Helen glanced at the poster again as she stood up to follow Victoria. The melancholy eyes of the drummer followed her out of the room. As she reached the top of the stairs Victoria, a few steps down, paused and fixed her with an intense expression on her face.
    ‘You can’t ever talk about it, what I told you about my dad.’ She took another couple of steps, before stopping again. ‘You have to promise.’
    ‘Of course I won’t.’ Helen stayed where she was for a few seconds, watching as Victoria carried on down, jumping the last section in one go. Was this all a massive windup? She recalled the expression on Victoria’s face as they’d studied the poster. If a story like that could happen to anyone, it would be this family. She’d just have to keep quiet and hope for more.
    The pizzas were a communal affair, with everyone elbowing for space around the end of the table.
    ‘Do you do this often?’ Helen asked, shoving at her hair with the back of her wrist.
    ‘Only when someone can be bothered to get it started.’ Seth grinned at her as he dumped another ball of dough on the table. ‘We’ll end up picking bits off the furniture for weeks.’
    Helen’s dough didn’t want to go into a pizza shape; it thickened and bulged, fighting back against the heels of her hands. She stood back for a rest, taking in the scene around her. The flour dusting the table rose up in the slanting light to settle in a fine layer over books, noses and hair. Victoria was adding arms and legs to her bases, and Seth was showing Pippa how to spin hers out on her fingertips. From under the table, she could hear Will banging something on the floor whilst giving a running commentary. It was, she thought, like being in a slightly weird dream. Cooking was something she’d been made to do at school, or tried with her mother standing there and telling her she was doing it all wrong. And with her dad, food was ready meals or stuff out of tins. Pizzas came in frozen stacks, to be heated in the microwave into a floppy fold. She would never be like that when she grew up and left home. As she let her mind wander to a future where she had a life full of colour, where exotic flavours and beautiful possessions were taken for granted, something hit the side of her face.
    ‘Earth calling Helen, we’re doing the toppings.’ Victoria was poised to throw another olive from the far side of the table.
    ‘Don’t waste them.’ Seth was bringing the saucepan over. ‘How about making some space?’
    The sauce was still warm, and doing the toppings turned into a battle, getting spoons into the saucepan before it all went, grabbing the olives and cheese to layer on top. There were other odd ingredients as well, things Helen had never seen: a jar of soft peppers that slid through her fingers; anchovies; a long, mouldy-looking cylinder of salami.
    They ate the pizzas in the living room, helping themselves from a huge tray in the middle of the worn carpet. To begin with, Helen slipped some of the more unfamiliar ingredients to one side, but bits kept getting mixed up and they didn’t taste too bad anyway. She gave up and tried not to worry about the trails of flour and tomato sauce and oil leading in from the kitchen. It didn’t seem to be bothering anyone else, and it wasn’t as if there were any adults to worry about. Dimly she could hear her mother’s voice in her head, fussing about fingers and crumbs; it seemed to come from another world entirely. Even so, her stomach tightened with anxiety