TOUCH

1 It’s the day after my birthday and I’m on the train back to a home that feels nothing like home. I’ve always hated being born on New Year’s Day and this year it’s worse than usual. It’s the first year I’ve had to rush back for a job and the first time I’m starting the year in a place where I don’t know anyone outside my office and Mr Khan, the guy from the newsagents under my flat. And they don’t count.

All three of us knew it was different this time. Danny even gave me a clumsy teenage boy hug and mumbled something that might have been I’ll miss you. Then Mum pressed a slab of birthday cake wrapped in tin foil into my hands. Do you really need to go back so soon, love? she’d asked. I’d scooped her up then and squeezed her so tightly I could feel her heart thumping against my chest. I’d clung on as long as she’d let me, savouring it.

I can still smell her perfume on my scarf when I step off the train at Euston and I leave it on when I get home. The cake is a squashed mess by the time I unpack my bag, but it still tastes good. I sit in bed scooping blobs of icing off the crumpled foil with my