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me to.”
    “You’re not, Ella. Your hands are in the wrong place. You know she needs to have her head supported.” Mum took Jess from me and Jess instantly stopped crying. Then, to my dismay, Mum handed her back. “I’m going to need lots of help from you over the next few years, Ella, so you need to learn how to do this properly.”
    The next few
years
? She instructed me again exactly how to hold Jess: a hand here, another arm there, like a cradle. I tried it. Jess was quiet for a second, another second, even a third. We all started to relax. And then she looked up at me. Her whole face seemed to scrunch in on itself. Her skin reddened. Her mouth opened. The bellowing began again, louder than before.
    “Oh,
Ella
,” Mum said, crossly this time. I started my Jess-jiggling again, to no avail.
    “She’s obviously allergic to you,” Charlie said over the sound of the cries. He took in my furious expression. “Don’t blame me. Don’t shoot the messenger.”
    “Give her to me, please, Ella,” Mum said. I did. Jess stopped crying immediately. Mum started cooing to her, smiling and stroking her face, speaking in the singsong voice she’d started using only since Jess had arrived.
    “There we are, my Jessie. Are we all better now? Of
course
we are. You’re with Mummy, darling,
aren’t
you? That’s my dear little baby, yes! Who’s a good girl, my little Jessie? Who? You, that’s right. Good
girl
, Jessie.”
    Jess started to gurgle, a sweet, musical sound. At that moment, I hated it even more than I hated her crying.
    “She’s definitely allergic to you, Ella,” Charlie said. “Alternatively, she hates you.”
    He was joking, but it didn’t matter. I felt a surge of something wild inside me—hurt, anger, jealousy, all mixed in together. To my own astonishment as much as Charlie’s and Mum’s, I swept the jigsaw off the table and started shouting.
    “I’m allergic to
her
! I
hate
her! I hate
all
of you!” I ran out of the room and slammed the door. I heard Jess start crying again.
    Right then, I really didn’t care. I didn’t care about any of them, or anything. Why should I? They didn’t care about me. I ignored Mum calling to me to come back right now and apologize. I ran down the hall into my tiny room, threw myself onto the floor and wiggled under my bed as far as I could, until I was pressed right up against the wall, the carpet rough against my bare legs and my face. I started to cry, the tears hot on my cheeks. I heard the door open and the light being switched on. I could see Mum’s feet. I shut my eyes and stayed still until I heard the door shut again. My tears kept falling but I made no sound. A few minutes later, the door opened again. I held my breath. “Ella?” It was Mum again. “Ella? I know you’re there somewhere. Come back out here and apologize.” I stayed where I was.
    I ignored Charlie too when he came into my room soon after. I ignored Mum when she came in a third time. She had Jess in her arms, I could tell. I could hear her little hiccupy breaths. “Ella, I know you’re hiding under the bed. This childish behavior has to stop; do you hear me?”
    I lay there, as still as I could, until they went out again. I waited a few moments and then I really started crying, tears and loud sobs at once. I couldn’t seem to stop. I cried for every sad thing I could think of, going back as far as I could remember, finding new and old hurts. I cried about my dad, about him leaving, about the divorce. I cried about Lucas’s sad little baby fox. About a bad result on a recent school test. The loss of my bedroom. But, mostly, I cried about the now obvious truth. Mum loved Jess more than she loved me.
    I don’t know how much time passed, how long I was under the bed—an hour, maybe more. I could hear voices outside, Walter arriving home, the sounds of dinner being prepared, the TV. I stayed where I was, on the floor, in my dark room, my face pressed against the carpet. Eventually, I