Left of the Bang. Claire Lowdon

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       Six

      Sophie Witrand was squashed into the back seat of the Fiat Bravo with her brother James and her sister Harriet. Her swollen chest jounced painfully over the potholes of the Cornish back roads. The Witrands were on their way to Penderick Manor, a dilapidated country house about a mile from Padstow where they holidayed every year.

      ‘Soph? So-oph.’ Six-year-old Harriet waved her chubby hand in front of Sophie’s blank face, just like she’d seen their mother do. ‘Soph, let’s say the car’s a chocolate factory. Here’s where the chocolate gets mixed.’ She reached down between her legs and mimed vigorous stirring. ‘And this is the pipe’ – she made two loose tunnels from her fingers and thumbs and sketched out a pipe leading up to the headrest in front of Sophie – ‘and here’s the tap where it comes running out. Mmmm, mmmm, it’s sooo good.’ Harriet turned on an imaginary tap and leaned forward to lap at the chocolate.

      Sophie pulled down on her seatbelt, which was digging into the new hard bit underneath her left nipple, and wriggled away from her sister. ‘Mum, Harry won’t sit still. She’s being really annoying.’

      ‘Darling, she just wants to play with you.’

      ‘Harriet, quick, there’s a fire at the chocolate factory!’ James yelled, waving his hands to signify flames. ‘Nee-naw nee-naw nee-naw!’

      ‘Shut your gob, James,’ said Sophie.

      ‘Sophie!’ Mrs Witrand raised her voice. ‘I’ve told you before, I won’t have you using that unkind expression.’

      Harriet started to cry; James’s flailing elbow had caught her on the side of her head.

      ‘Right!’ shouted Mr Witrand. ‘Sleeping Lions, the lot of you!’

      For a moment, Sophie considered objecting to the childishness of this, but the idea of closing her eyes and disappearing from the chaos of siblings and parents was very appealing. She leaned her head against her seatbelt strap and tried to get comfortable.

      Next thing she knew, she was being gently shaken awake by her father.

      ‘Sophie, Sophie, we’re here.’

      He was squatting in the gravel driveway outside the West Wing, his face just level with hers. Francis Witrand was tall and lanky with prominent knees. He favoured brown deck shoes without socks, and Aertex polo shirts in navy blue and racing green. His perfectly round, tortoiseshell spectacles never came off, even when he was in the sea.

      ‘Well, I reckon you won that round,’ he smiled. ‘You didn’t even hear us taking the bags in, did you?’ He helped her gently to her feet. ‘James and Harriet are in the kitchen – I think they’re waiting for you.’

      ‘Why?’ Sophie was confused. Then she remembered. ‘Oh, that.’ Usually, Sophie led her siblings in an inventory of their favourite things: the big bed in the girls’ room, with the enormous scrolled footboard that made it feel like a ship; a chipped rocking horse with real horse hair in its tail; the old bread oven in the kitchen wall, where James had once hidden during their most epic game of hide-and-seek; the picnic tree, a hollow oak in the garden big enough for all three of them to fit inside.

      ‘Actually, I think I’d rather just go and unpack,’ Sophie told her father. ‘Tell the others they can do it without me this time.’ She scrunched across the gravel to the house, her puffy nipples chafing from the friction of her T-shirt. It felt hot between her legs, and a little bit itchy.

      In the bedroom, she lay down on the big ship-bed and took out her mp3 player. Sophie’s parents disapproved of all pop music expect those bands with ‘real musical merit’, which amounted to Sting, Dory Previn and the Beatles. Sophie selected track 09 on The Best of the Beatles