My parents threw me out at sixteen after I lost my leg. Nineteen years later they wanted a million dollars for my sister — to hide why a 24 -year-old woman may never walk again.

Not when he said it. Not when the door opened. Not when I went past her with the bag.

I put three changes of clothes into it. That was more or less everything I owned.

Sixteen years old. One leg. Two crutches that did not fit. One bin bag.

I walked nearly two miles to my aunt’s house.

Norah was my mother’s estranged sister and I had met her perhaps six times in my life.

She opened the door, looked at me for about one second, and pulled me inside.

She did not interrogate me. She did not ring my mother. She put the kettle on and then she went and made up the spare room while I sat at her kitchen table not talking.

She took me to have my crutches properly fitted, which took forty minutes and which nobody had done in six years. She bought me clothes. She got me back into school.