She believed there were two types of disaster. There were catastrophes like tidal waves and landslides that came crashing down on their victims with brutal and unavoidable force. Then there was the type of disaster that happened without fanfare, the terrible thing that crept up and slithered in. This thing was silent and relentless like decay but its accumulated effects were devastating. It not only destroyed your life but it also left you feeling impotent and guilty as if you should have noticed earlier and done more to prevent its advance.

Ricky’s disaster had arrived with stealth. At first, the changes were minor and she had resisted in small ways. She’d worried but trouble had seemed like a distant possibility, so she didn’t go all out to protect what she had. But things kept disintegrating and falling away until she realised it was too late to do anything. Now her father was packing things into boxes and she was powerless to stop him. She struggled to understand this change, to rearrange the way she thought and felt. But it wasn’t any use. The undoing of her family and her life in Brixton was like the drip, drip, drip of water on stone, the wearing away of solid particles by soft persistence until finally there was a hole.

In the move to Camden, Ricky suffered a great loss. It was a yawning emptiness that terrified and disoriented her but what came in its place, the unspeakable slithery thing that inveigled itself, was far worse than any of her losses.

She heard Dan slam the back of the rental truck and leaned over the driver’s seat to look in the wing mirror. It was a quick glance but he was already there, as if anticipating her. He raised his eyebrows and smiled at her reflection. She quickly sat up again.

He rapped his knuckles on the driver’s window. ‘Once I get the bike in the back we’ll be ready to rock ’n’ roll!’

Her mother laughed, which made Ricky want to scream because Dan was about as hilarious as an infection. She consid­ered various diseases before settling on syphilis.

It was hot inside the truck’s cab. The backs of Ricky’s legs were sticking to the vinyl upholstery. Her ponytail was damp against her neck. She desperately wanted short hair, a boy’s number three, but her mother said no. The ponytail was a compromise…

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