‘Will Traynor was the finest man I ever knew.’

She let her gaze run up and down me. ‘Yes. Well, I can imagine that’s probably true.’

I thought I had never been filled with such an instant dislike for someone.

I had stood to leave when a voice broke into the silence. ‘So my dad really didn’t know about me.’

Lily was standing very still in the doorway. Tanya Houghton-Miller blanched. Then she recovered herself. ‘I was saving you from hurt, Lily. I knew Will very well, and I was not prepared to put either of us through the humiliation of trying to persuade him to be part of a relationship he wouldn’t have wanted.’ She smoothed her hair. ‘And you really must stop this awful eavesdropping habit. You’re likely to get quite the wrong end of the stick.’

I couldn’t listen to any more. I walked to the door as a boy began shouting upstairs. A plastic truck flew down the stairs and crashed into pieces somewhere below. An anxious face – Filipina? – gazed at me over the banister. I began to walk down the stairs.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m sorry, Lily. We’ll – perhaps we’ll talk some other time.’

‘But you’ve hardly told me anything about my dad.’

‘He wasn’t your father,’ Tanya Houghton-Miller said. ‘Francis has done more for you since you were little than Will ever would have done.’

‘Francis is not my dad,’ Lily roared.

Another crash from upstairs, and a woman’s voice, shouting in a language I didn’t understand. A toy machine-gun sent tinny blasts into the air. Tanya put her hands to her head. ‘I can’t cope with this. I simply can’t cope.’

Lily caught up with me at the door. ‘Can I stay with you?’

‘What?’

‘At your flat? I can’t stay here.’

‘Lily, I don’t think –’

‘Just for tonight. Please.’

‘Oh, be my guest. Have her stay with you for a day or two. She’s just delightful company.’ Tanya waved a hand. ‘Polite, helpful, loving. A dream to have around!’ Her face hardened. ‘Let’s see how that works out. You know she drinks? And smokes in the house? And that she was suspended from school? She’s told you all this, has she?’

Lily seemed almost bored, as if she had heard this a million times before.

‘She didn’t even bother turning up for her exams. We’ve done everything possible for her. Counsellors, the best schools, private tutors. Francis has treated her as if she were his own. And she just throws it all back in our faces. My husband is having a very difficult time at the bank right now, and the boys have their issues, and she doesn’t give us an inch. She never has.’

‘How would you even know? I’ve been with nannies half my life. When the boys were born, you sent me to boarding-school.’

‘I couldn’t cope with all of you! I did what I could!’

‘You did what you wanted, which was to start your perfect family all over again, without me.’ Lily turned back to me. ‘Please? Just for a bit? I promise I won’t get under your feet at all. I’ll be really helpful.’

I should have said no. I knew I should. But I was so angry with that woman. And just for a moment I felt as if I had to stand in for Will, to do the thing he couldn’t do. ‘Fine,’ I said, as a large Lego creation whistled past my ear and smashed into tiny coloured pieces by my feet. ‘Grab your things. I’ll be waiting outside.’

The rest of the day was a blur. We moved my boxes out of the spare room, stacking them in my bedroom, and made the room hers, or at least less of a storage area, putting up the blind I had never quite got round to fixing, and moving in a lamp and my spare bedside table. I bought a camp bed, and we carried it up the stairs together, with a hanging rail for her few things, a new duvet cover and pillow cases. She seemed to like having a purpose, and was completely unfazed at the idea of moving in with somebody she hardly knew. I watched her arranging her few belongings in the spare room that evening and felt oddly sad. How unhappy did a girl have to be to want to leave all that luxury for a box room with a camp bed and a wobbly clothes rail?

I cooked pasta, conscious of the strangeness of having someone to cook for, and we watched television together. At half past eight her phone went off and she asked for a piece of paper and a pen. ‘Here,’ she said, scribbling on it. ‘This is my mum’s mobile number. She wants your phone number and address. In case of emergencies.’

I wondered fleetingly how often she thought Lily was going to stay.

At ten, exhausted, I told her I was turning in. She was still watching television, sitting cross-legged on the sofa, and messaging someone on her little laptop. ‘Don’t stay up too late, okay?’ It sounded fake on my lips, like someone pretending to be an adult.

Her eyes were still glued to the television.

‘Lily?’

She looked up, as if she’d only just noticed I was in the room. ‘Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you. I was there.’

‘Where?’

‘On the roof. When you fell. It was me who called the ambulance.’

I saw her face suddenly, those big eyes, that skin, pale in the darkness. ‘But what were you doing up there?’

‘I found your address. After everyone at home had gone nutso, I just wanted to work out who you were before I tried to talk to you. I saw I could get up there by the fire escape and your light was on. I was just waiting, really. But when you came up and started messing about on the edge I suddenly thought if I said anything I’d freak you out.’