'So, when are tha off t'university, Miles?'

I stop chewing and force my eyes up to Bà. She scrutinises me from across the table. I didn't have high expectations but I hoped we'd get further than five minutes into dinner before the question.

I eat slowly to mentally prepare myself, acutely aware of every pair of eyes on me. 'Soon.'

My tone must give away my disinterest because her eyes narrow. 'Miles, you have to go t'university.' Bà and Ông Nội call both Iris and me by our government names, never Xoài or Thỏ, unlike Má's family. They think nicknames are stupid superstitions by nhà quê — country bumpkins. 'We didn't pay for your school for ya t'work in some warehouse forever.'

'No, I know.' I poke at the mushrooms in my soup. 'I will go t'uni. Just... when I figure out what I wanna study.'

Ông opens his mouth but Ziri speaks first. 'He just got promoted to shift manager last month.' Ziri places a hand on my knee under the table and I glance to find him smiling. He's so proud I don't quite know what to do with it. There are people my age with postgraduate degrees.

'That's reet grand, but it's no career,' Ông says, picking more shrimp and lettuce leaves into his bowl. 'You can't wait much longer or your school diploma will expire. You're almost twenty-four.'

'He can always do some courses in open university to apply with on top of A-levels.' Ziri's voice is so chipper it gains a passive-aggressive edge. 'Loads of people go to uni well into their thirties or forties these days. One of my classmates was actually fifty-two.'

The table is stunned into silence whilst Ziri, refusing to feel awkward, attempts to pick stir-fried lettuce leaves into his bowl with a fork because he still can't use chopsticks.

'And he's got a forklift licence which I find really sexy.' Má chokes on her water whilst Iris snorts into her food. Ziri casts me a glance to say tough crowd before he turns to Bà and Ông's astounded expressions. 'That was a joke. Sorry.'

I warned him several times that my family (like most people on Earth) will not understand his sense of humour so best not to make jokes, but I have to wrestle a smile. He builds me an armour with his love. To express my gratitude, I take his bowl and fill it with a second portion so he don't have to struggle with his fork.

Thankfully Bà moves on. 'So, what do you do, Ziri?' She struggles to speak his name, so foreign with its short angles, but she sounds like she might genuinely be interested.

'I'm a media consultant for a cosmetics company in Brighton. It's not what I planned on doing — I got this job just for the summer after my BA cause I didn't get accepted into any research consultant jobs without higher qualifications, but it turned out a decent fit so I stuck around. And it's Black-owned, so the sunblock doesn't turn you white.' He shrugs. 'So that's what I'll be doing for the time being and then we'll see.'

In reality, the main reason he stayed is that his boss has an aunt with bipolar so she's incredibly understanding and I think Ziri's afraid he won't find it anywhere else. Though his episodes have been mild the past few years — "who knew that when doctors say balanced diet and regular exercise, they really mean balanced diet and regular exercise?" — he still needs several weeks of sick leave annually.

'Ziri's reet clever. He got into Oxford and all.'

This rouses Ông's attention. 'You went t'Oxford?'

'No, I didn't go. I did get a preliminary acceptance but I rejected it.'

'You... rejected Oxford?'

'Yeah.' Ziri tugs at the braid in front of his ear, discomfort finally infiltrating him. 'I didn't want to spend three years of my life in such a stressful and competitive environment. And it's so far too — from Sufsdale, I mean. I like living close to my parents.'

Ông laughs incredulously, the admiration that blossomed for a moment rotting away into summat pungent. 'I don't understand your generation. When I were young, we didn't throw away opportunities, us. We did what were best for us even if we didn't fancy it cause we knew we'd be thankful in the future and to respect our parents. And you lot can't handle being stressed for a few years.'

I grimace but Ziri nods politely. 'I understand that. But my parents have given up so much for me to have a better life. If I continue to do things I know will make me unhappy for material wealth I have no dire need for, isn't that disrespectful to them?'

Ông stares at him, entirely unbothered to mask his dislike, but decides not to voice it. Shaking his head, he continues to eat.

At least, they're trying. Bà's lips are pursed in a way that makes it clear she's holding back her disagreement too. She moves the words around like mouthwash until they rearrange into summat else. 'So how'd you meet?'

'School,' Ziri answers at the same time as I say, 'He's our neighbour.' We share a smile. 'Actually, we met at a grocery shop,' I correct. 'You were buying dates and looked like you wanted to kill me.'

When Ziri looks at me, he builds walls to make a room just for us. 'In my defence, your accent's annoyin.'

'I know you normally get away with saying that, love, but you're in Leeds now so unfortunately, you won't have the popular vote.'

Iris fake retches. 'Stop being cute when the rest of us are trying to eat.'

The orange walls collapse and I remember exactly where we are.

Bà keeps me firmly grounded. 'So you're from this "Sufsdale" that Hue insisted on moving to?'

Ziri opens his mouth but hesitates. The question don't sound like it's targeted at him, or like a question at all.

Má sighs. 'I like it there. It's... serene.'

'It's no surprise you like it, Hue. It's t'only place where you could find a job.'

Iris rolls her eyes and starts to pour food into her mouth to escape as soon as possible.

I catch Má's gaze to convey a silent apology. It keeps me occupied so that when Bà asks Ziri how we started dating, he responds before I can process the question. 'I tutored Miles in maths.'

Silence rings during which nobody breathes. Ziri slowly lifts his gaze from his food to take in the crater at the centre of the table from the bomb he dropped.

Má's stare clutches mine with a vice grip. Her voice is barely audible. 'He tutored you? In maths?'

I slip my hands under the table to wipe the sweat from my palms on my thighs. 'Aye...' A tap opens and the house in my mind starts to flood. My chest starts to tighten and in a last-resort attempt to keep my ribs from suffocating me, I snap, 'You're the one who made me take further maths when you know I'm rubbish at it.'

Bà casts Má a scathing glance — look what you did to him. It's Má's fault for not raising me properly. My leg jerks, knocks into the table, and the dishes clatter, which is the only thing that stops my urge to jump in front of Má as if Bà could fire bullets with just a look. It's not Má's fault I'm stupid.

Bà turns to Ziri before I can move. 'What mark did you get, Ziri?'

He squirms in his seat. 'Oh, um, it doesn't matter. I don't remember, it was five years ago–'

'He got an A star.'

Bà's eyebrows fly up. 'And you got a B after tutoring? What would you have gotten without tutoring?'

'Failed probably. It's been five years, can we stop talking about my A-levels?'

'Maybe if you went t'university, we'd have summat new to talk about. Though it certainly won't be Oxford, that's for sure. With such a clever boyfriend, you could become a little cleverer too.' Bà lips purse. 'Your dad didn't die just so you could sit around and do nowt with your life.'

'Ba didn't die for owt, he just died.'

The words have barely scraped past my teeth before I dig my pointer fingernail into the scab lining the nail of my thumb. Why would I say that? I try to catch Má's eye but she don't look at me. I've embarrassed her. I've embarrassed her and I'm s'posed to be on her side. I'm s'posed to be on her side.

Ziri's hand falls over mine under the table just before I draw blood.

            Ziri drops onto the edge of the bottom bunk, burying his face in his hands so that the crack in his voice muffles. 'I'm sorry, I forgot to pack it.' All the contents of our bag are piled on the bed with the empty bag at his feet but The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le Guin can't be found amongst the clothes.

'It's fine.'

He lifts his face to glare at me. 'No. You asked me if I'd packed it several times and I snapped at you and now I didn't pack it anyway.'

A smile tugs at my mouth. Ziri swings from demanding he's always right to insisting that everything wrong in the world is his fault at such a rapid pace it can only be amusing.

I walk to him, cupping his face so he has to look at me. 'Don't worry about it. I'm not cross with you. I've got my old books so we can just read one of em.'

He scowls stubbornly at me for a moment, then forces his anxiety out with an exhale. 'Okay.'

'Okay,' I echo and step back but Ziri catches me by the fabric of my pyjama trousers.

His face is pained again. 'I'm sorry. I didn't know you'd not told them about tutorin.'

'It's fine. You were answering a question.' Remorse swims in his eyes and I look away, grateful for the bunk bed now that it allows me to hide my face above the top bunk. 'When I did bad on my GCSEs, they let it be a coincidence but doing bad on my A-levels too just means I'm dense and I didn't wanna give em more to complain about.'

Because I'm blocking him from standing up, Ziri hugs my hips and suddenly I can't breathe. How is it possible for the thought of school to lock up every muscle in my body when I graduated five years ago?

I can't blame them though, Bà, Má, or Ông. I know I have to go to uni. And I will. But every time I open the UCAS website, a fog machine turns on in my mind and don't ease up till I close the tab.

The cinch of my throat promises tears and the last thing I want is to cry here, so I step back, Ziri's arms falling from me. 'I don't wanna talk about it now.'

The bookshelf is crammed with all our old kid books and boxes of "artwork" we made as toddlers. I pry out one of the Rainbow Fairy books — Bethany the Ballet Fairy, a warm wistfulness settling over me. 'I used to read these to Iris... Can't believe she's sixteen — swear down, two minutes ago, she were five.' I put it back and pull out The Good Person Of Szechwan. It used to be one of my favourite books, probably because it's a play and easier to read, which also makes it short enough that we have a chance of finishing it during our stay.

Instinctively, I open it. It parts roughly a third into the book and my stomach drops. Two polaroid pictures have left indents on the page where they've been pressed for seven years and as they release from their prison, summat dislodges from the depths of my mind. I slam the book shut.

Ziri, in the middle of repacking our bag, casts me a questioning glance and I try to laugh. 'Not this one.'

The book is a paperback and after four failed attempts of cramming it back into the crevice I got it from, I accept that there's no way of doing that without crumpling the pages and lay it on top of the other books instead.

I take out Coraline and hold it up to ask for his opinion.

'Is that somethin you wanna read right now?'

'Aye, why not?'

Summat fleeting crosses behind his eyes but he decides not to express it, granting me a smile as he stands up to look for a socket.

This room were organised when we had Nokias that needed to be charged once a week and he has to lie on the floor to reach the socket behind the bed headboard. He crawls back into the bottom bunk when I've already settled into it so he straddles my lap to plug his phone in except the cord slips into the crevice between the bed and the wall before he can.

Groaning, he pushes up to peer into the gap before he crams his arm into it to blindly feel around for the cord, which positions his groin right in front of me.

'Get your cock out of my face.'

'You love my cock in your face.'

'Aye, but you won't let me suck it so this is just cruel.'

Ziri drops back and smacks my chest. 'Shut up.' With his phone finally successfully plugged into the charger, his attention falls entirely on me. 'You want me to read?'

I nod.

'You wanna be small spoon?'

I nod again and we rotate in the cramped space, narrowly avoiding elbowing each other, until he sits against the headboard and I relax against him. Ziri drapes his arms around me, holding the book in front of both of us, and reads aloud.

            Ziri falls asleep quickly. Nuzzled into my side with one leg spread over mine, his breaths fan my neck. But as much as I attempt to follow his rhythm, sleep don't tease even the edges of my consciousness. The bunk would be uncomfortable for one person though I wouldn't be sleeping in a California king bed right now.

The 80s digital clock radio on the table informs me it's 02:46. After hours of staring at the planks of the top bunk, my brain has started to find images in the pattern of the wood the way you do in clouds. These patterns aren't fun though. The smile from the photograph that I once found so charming haunts me in the dark. His voice squeezes through the gap under the basement door of my mind to echo in my head — You're so good for me, bunny.

Somehow my chest feels tight and hollow at once. The pressure from the inside is at least as strong as that from the outside and I think my ribs might crack if I don't find a way to ease it.

Slowly, I slide sideways off the bed. Ziri whines and cocoons into the duvet to stay warm but don't wake. Pulling a jumper over my t-shirt to cover my tattoos just in case, I take The Good Person of Szechwan from the bookcase, slip out the polaroid photos, and sneak out of the room.

The house is asleep. The carpet makes it easy to stay silent as I tread downstairs. There's a long reach lighter in the firewood basket by the grate and I position it to the corner of the first polaroid but my momentum ends before I can press for flame. Dominic's immortalised smile beams at me. Even in the low-quality picture, the blue of his eyes is captivating. Sixteen-year-old me smiles beside him. From this side of the rift, I look so young. Sixteen has never been younger...

I tear my attention from the picture and press the lighter button. The plastic takes a moment to catch fire and I wait until half of my face is fully devoured before I toss it into the ashes left in the grate.

The second polaroid is of me alone, sitting on the bed of a hotel in Ripon, naked save for a pleated skirt and socks. 'Give it to your next boyfriend,' Dominic said when I asked what I were s'posed to do with it; I let him take pictures but I didn't have any desire to look at them. I thought it were a joke at the time. Now I'm not so sure what he meant by it. I light it too and toss it on top of the first, curled in the fire with an acrid smell of burning plastic.

I watch them shrink out of existence but whatever cleansing I expected fails. I manage only to burn the pictures to the back of my head. I just feel dirtier.

The pressure against my ribs doubles, pushing from the inside as if to crack the cage open — a sensation as familiar as this house and just as foreign. I haven't thought about Dominic in years. I thought I'd got rid of him. But here he is, trying to make my bones malleable so they're not an inconvenience.

'What're you doing?'

I flinch and whirl around to see Iris standing in the kitchen archway with a collection of dirty dishes. Cursing, I press a hand over my chest, the pounding of my heart reverberating in my palm even through my jumper.

I turn the question on her without answering. 'What are you doing awake? It's three in the morning.'

'I'm a teenager,' she says as if this answers the question.

The streaks of teal hair blend into her natural black in the dark but she manages to scrutinize me perfectly well without them. Ông knocked down the wall between the living room and kitchen almost twenty years ago and now we stare at each other from different rooms. Until Iris turns away to leave the collection of dirty dishes in the sink.

'Good night, then.' She retreats back up the stairs.

I turn to the fireplace. The flames have died out. All that's left of the photographs is one white corner. Still, I prod the ash with the iron poker to bury the evidence. Bà has an eye for detail.

Sleep has left. I don't think I have a chance tonight and as much as I'd love to go back to bed just to be with Ziri, I can't bring myself to do it. I don't know how to lie next to him now.

Instead, I turn to the altar partially hidden behind an armchair like an afterthought. It's smaller than the one I now have at home and has nowt but a framed picture of Buddha and liquid incense sticks. The only time I've seen Bà or Ông Nội pray were after Ba's funeral.

Maybe they weren't ever particularly devoted or maybe they lost it when they came here, as if life in this country made the philosophy of connectedness difficult to believe when we are so clearly other and the philosophy of kindness difficult to practice when everyone keeps urging you to bite all the hands that feed you to eliminate them as competition... Bà Ngoại used to pray several times a day.

I bow to the picture of Budda and settle down to worship. I recite a sutra in a whisper to force Dominic out of my thoughts and lock him back into the basement of my mind.