Chapter 3

To live alone;bit her mother said no, after the summer kate would come home to London to live in the same flat as before, with her mother, though her father would be somewhere else.

Kate didn't know what to think. she felt hollow inside,and guilty as well: a sort of sick,sinking feeling.

Truckle, she said to herself, to fill the space:tucked up in a truckle bed.

Kate's mother was called Judith. she and Bella were twins. It seemed to Kate that having a twin must be a magical thing: exciting, yet also safe,more solid than your reflection in the mirror.

There was safety in numbers, which was why Kate did not like hearing herself described as an only child.

Kate's father, sebastian, was also an only child and he seemed to her to be a strange, solitary creature, not a father, exactly; not like the way her uncle was a father to his children.

sometimes sebastian roared; sometimes he cried. Father. she spelt the word out in her head, but sometimes it turned into father.

The night before she had come to her uncle's house.