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Monday morning, I found Rose in her bedroom, playing with her Barbies on the floor. It surprised me that she still played with dolls and I had been expecting her to lose interest for ages, especially as she was constantly reminding me that she was no longer a baby. When we’d moved into this house she’d insisted on having neutral, ‘grown-up’ colours in her bedroom: white and cream rather than the pink and purple she’d preferred in our old place. Most of her cuddly toys and her My Little Pony collection had gone straight to a charity shop. She had stopped watching Nickelodeon and TV shows about mermaids, and now preferred old sitcoms like Friends , though I noticed she watched it with a serious face, like it was a documentary about the past rather than a comedy.

Her Barbie dolls were the only accessories she had kept from her childhood, and she didn’t want me to read her bedtime stories anymore. As Emma always reminded me, you had to let them grow up. Rose would be entering puberty soon. She’d be a teenager before long. If popular wisdom was to be believed, that was when the true nightmare would begin.

The Ken doll was lying on his back, Rose making him writhe around, choking noises coming from his throat. One of her Barbies was standing over him, watching.

In her Barbie voice – which had taken on a bizarre Cockney twang – Rose said, ‘What’s wrong? Ken?’

In return, the Ken made more choking sounds, then lay still.

Her Barbie doll sobbed and threw herself on to the carpet. ‘Oh Ken, Ken.’

‘Rose?’

She whirled around. ‘Don’t do that! You made me jump!’

‘Sorry, sweetheart. Are you okay? It looks like poor old Ken here just kicked the bucket.’

I picked him up and she snatched him from me, but didn’t say anything.

‘What was wrong with him?’ I asked.

She turned him over in her hands for a little while before saying, ‘He had an allergy. An aphyl ... apyhlantic ... anaflac ...’

‘Anaphylactic shock?’

She nodded.

‘Was he stung by a bee or something?’

‘He ate a peanut. And he couldn’t find his special pen.’

‘His EpiPen.’ I paused. ‘Do you know someone who’s allergic to peanuts? Oh wait, Fiona is, isn’t she?’ She had mentioned it at the barbecue. ‘Are you worried about her?’

‘Why would I be? Fiona is careful, and she always carries an EpiPen.’

‘That’s good.’

‘But the man in the park didn’t.’

I looked at her. ‘What man?’

She was still turning Ken over in her hands. ‘On Friday, me and Fiona went to Brockwell Park and we saw a man eat a cookie then fall over, and then he died.’

I was too shocked to speak for a moment. ‘You ... saw this happen?’

She nodded, her expression deadly serious.

‘Oh, Rose. How much ... I mean, you actually saw him ... die?’

‘Yeah. His face went totally red and he held his neck like this and then he couldn’t breathe anymore.’ As she spoke she put her hands around her own windpipe.

Horrified, I thought back to Friday evening. When I’d got home from work Rose had already been back for a couple of hours and she had seemed completely fine. Maybe a little quiet, but I had assumed that was because it was the end of the week and she was tired.

‘Did you tell Mum about this?’

‘No. I was going to tell her, but when I got home she was on the phone for ages, and then I forgot.’

‘You forgot ?’

She shrugged.

‘Really? It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would slip your mind. Rose, you promised us, if anything happened while you were out with Fiona ...’

‘I forgot, okay?!’

She had form for this. When she was eight, her pet goldfish had died, and when Emma noticed, finding Nemo floating in his tank, Rose had said, ‘Oh yes, he died a few days ago and I forgot to tell you.’

There had been other incidents too, like when she was in the last year of primary school and her best friend, Jasmine, had decided she didn’t want to be Rose’s friend anymore. For months, Rose had acted as if everything was normal until a teacher told us he was concerned, as he’d seen Rose standing on her own in the playground every day, while her old friendship group ignored her. Rose said she had forgotten to tell us she and Jasmine had fallen out. When Emma phoned Jasmine’s mum to see if we could engineer a reconciliation, Jasmine’s mum said that Jasmine had started crying when she asked her about it but wouldn’t give any details. It was so close to the end of primary school that we’d let it go, aware that kids fell out all the time and thinking Rose would make a new set of friends at secondary school. But it was another example of Rose forgetting to tell us important stuff.

What was more shocking to me now was that Fiona hadn’t told us. Or had she told Emma, who was at work now? Things had been tense between Emma and me since the Pulp gig and especially the barbecue. There was a thick atmosphere that hung inside the house like fog, and I had been avoiding her, spending the evenings in my ‘man cave’, listening to music, continuing to catalogue my collection. Emma, meanwhile, would sit downstairs with a bottle of wine watching true crime documentaries. Lola would wander back and forth between us, as if trying to broker peace. But after the last year of trying to save my marriage, I was tired of hearing myself say, ‘Can we talk?’ I wanted Emma to come to me. So poor Lola’s efforts went unrewarded.

There was another thing, something I was ashamed to admit even to myself. I kept thinking about Fiona. Picturing her leaning towards me over the table. Imagining her kissing me.

Wondering what it would be like to be with her instead of Emma.

I said to Rose, ‘Come down for breakfast and we can talk about this afterwards. I’ll make you scrambled eggs.’

She promised to come down when it was ready. Downstairs, I found Dylan in the kitchen, his head inside the fridge, complaining there was nothing to eat, and pulled him aside while the pan was warming up. ‘Did you know anything about Rose seeing a guy die the other day?’

‘She saw someone die ? Whoa. You mean, when she was with Fiona?’

‘Yes.’ I explained what Rose had told me.

‘Is she upset?’

‘I can’t really tell.’

‘I bet she isn’t.’ He exhaled sharply through his nose. ‘Rose is such a weirdo.’

I was shocked to hear this from him. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Dunno. Just ... Yesterday she was telling me about this museum Fiona took her to, and all these decapitated dog heads she saw.’

‘The Horniman? I took you there when you were little. You had nightmares afterwards.’

‘Yeah? Well, Rose loved it. She was going on about wolves and apex predators. She loves horror movies too. Fiona lets her watch them. She probably enjoyed seeing a dead body.’

‘Dylan! That’s a terrible thing to say.’

He shrugged and left the room.

I made the scrambled eggs on toast and called Rose down, then texted Emma.

Did you know about Rose seeing some guy go into anaphylactic shock in the park on Friday?

The reply came back immediately. WTF? No! What happened?!

The guy died and Rose saw it. She said she forgot to mention it!

Three dots appeared, disappeared, then reappeared again. Sorry, I have to go into a meeting but we can talk to her later.

I went over to the kitchen table, where Rose was sitting. She had put her headphones on and was watching videos on her phone while she ate.

I pointed at my head, gesturing for her to take the headphones off. ‘I’m popping next door to see Fiona.’

I wanted to know why she hadn’t told us about the dead man.

‘She’s not in. She’s gone to see an old friend. Going to be out all day, she said.’

I sat down beside her. ‘Dylan said something about you watching horror movies.’

Her brows furrowed. ‘He’s such a snitch.’ A pause. ‘It was only one.’

‘Rose, you’re too young to watch scary films. Which one was it?’

‘It was ...’ She hesitated. ‘ M3GAN . It’s not even a proper horror. It’s for kids.’

‘The one about the robot doll?’

‘Yeah, all my friends have watched it. It’s all over TikTok.’

I looked it up on my phone. ‘Rose, it’s a fifteen. You’re not allowed to watch that.’

‘You told me you watched loads of horror films when you were a kid. You said you saw Nightmare on Elm Street when you were twelve.’

‘Yes, and it scared the crap out of me! I didn’t sleep for two weeks. Did Fiona let you watch this movie?’

She pressed her lips together.

‘I don’t want you watching any more horror films, okay? If there’s a movie you want to watch, come and talk to me or Mum and we’ll make a decision.’

She exhaled loudly. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Sure. But Rose – what you saw on Friday in the park. Are you okay? How are you feeling about it?’

She looked me straight in the eye. ‘It was horrible to see and shocking, and I hope I never have to see anything like that again. But I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me, Dad.’

She got up and left the room, leaving me wondering whether I’d just listened to a prepared speech.