I peel a patch of skin from my lip only to regret it a second later. How was my day? Feels like a loaded question. The correct answer is fine, I guess or whatever noncommittal response I give at every other dinner when Baba interrogates the impossible.

Today, a shrug isn't enough, so I take a deep breath and do my best to concoct a tone that's nonchalant but expresses my understanding that money doesn't grow on trees. 'Um... my bike's got flat tires. I... went over some glass by accident.'

Iya clashes her spoon into her bowl. 'Again? We had them replaced last month.'

'Je sais.' Wringing my hands in my lap, I stare at her worn ones, at the hyperpigmentation in the webbing of her fingers. 'I already took it to Ronny's. I can pick it up after school on Thursday, he said.'

Ronny had looked at me through hooded eyelids the way he tends to. "You know I can tell these've been cut with a knife, right?" I insisted I'd gone over a particularly sharp rock, the subtext being: just don't tell my parents.

They were so happy when I got into North Chapel and even more so when granted a full scholarship. I don't want them to know.

But this confession alone shrouds the starters. I allow it to settle, wait for both of them to resume eating before I get to the worst. My intention in opening with the bike was to wedge my foot in the door to make the next one easier, suffer the butter knife first and then the machete, but now that it's done, it might've been better the other way around — if I started with the machete, the butter knife would scarcely add to the wound.

'And... er... I also got sacked.'

Baba pinches his nose, a sigh rattling at the back of his throat. 'Ziri, you have been fired from more jobs than anyone can count.' I've counted. It's six now. 'Soon you'll have gone through every job in this town. Then where will you work?'

I shrug. 'I could always upload a sex tape to YouTube.'

'You think this will make money?' It's shocking Iya manages to speak through her flattened lips.

'It worked for Kim Kardashian.' They stare at me with vacant expressions. They don't know who Kim Kardashian is, do they? 'I'm jokin.' With a wave of the hand, I dismiss their worries and turn to Baba. 'Can't you just get me a job at Asda?'

'No.'

I want to tell him his principles of rejecting nepotism aren't teaching me any life lessons other than virtue has little significance in the job market during a global recession. Though it might not be about sticking to your values. Maybe his reason is plain self-preservation: he doesn't want my "attitude problems" to ruin his reputation at work.

'Ziri, this isn't something to laugh about. There are fewer jobs every day and you're too old to not have an income of your own.' With a shift in pitch and a tilt of the head, as if encountering something alien whilst only a third into an errands list so that the oddity has only a fleeting space to occupy in your mind, Baba adds, 'Though I've got no idea what you use it on.'

Porn, obviously. I manage to swallow the joke at the last moment though the corners of my mouth insist on rising.

Despite my best effort to stifle it, Iya's eyes narrow. 'You think this financial crisis, this is funny?'

The smile transforms into a gawk. 'When've I said that?'

I only become aware of my left index hooking around the chain of my cross to lift the pendant between my lips when Iya flicks her wrist. 'Stop eating that.'

'Pardon.' I drop it, then mould into my chair with a sigh and crack of my knuckles. 'I'm sorry. It wasn't my fault, it was cause I was late and I was late cause of my bike. It my bike's fault.'

It was Miles's fault. Or Lysander's fault. When you're covered in blood, do you blame the knife or the wound?

Baba nods and smiles, the kind of smile that says anything is okay as long as I learn a lesson from it. 'It's alright. You'll just have to find a new one.'

I'll just have to find a new one. Easy...

After a silent dinner, Baba stands up to pour tea whilst I grab a glass of water and the first violet pill box from the same shelf of the pantry where we keep Asda Wheat Bisks and our breadbasket. I have four of them so I'll only have to count once a month.

I slip back into my chair, dumping both items onto the embroidered tablecloth, prop my head up with my elbow, and fumble with the "Mon, PM" locker with my free hand. Just as I'm about to wedge it open, Iya snatches the box with a rattle of pills and does it for me. She gently places it on the table, though shoots me a withering scowl nonetheless: stop being lazy, you're making it unnecessarily difficult.

Easy for her to say when she doesn't need to jam them into her throat twice a day.

But I lodge my elbow off the tablecloth and use both hands to lay the pills in a neat row by size in front of me: 2 mg diazepam, 150 mg lithium, 150 mg lithium, 300 mg carbamazepine. The same order every day, twice a day, a way of playing with my food that makes it a little more bearable.

The task is easy enough until I reach the carbamazepine, which doesn't have a plastic capsule and dusts my tongue with a coat of papery granules no matter how short a second it's in my mouth.

Baba places a glass of mint tea beside the pill box and I mumble my thanks before pressing the diazepam to my tongue. I need a new source of income even if he doesn't know it's so I can pay him and Iya back for Edenfield. I'm still 2,643 and twenty pence short.

Notes

Je sais: (French) I know