Usually in a business meltdown like this one, people get to keep their personal stuff, but in our case, every single thing we had was owned by the company. I know, I should have given it away years ago. I'm almost sure he didn't see them load my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beanbag chair. 'Your powers of observation are impeccable, Whitters.' I wondered if he knew the whole sorry story. Josh Whitters from school pulled up on his bike when the truck was being loaded. It's pretty much like moving, only you never see the moving truck again. The creditors, people to whom my father owed money, sent in liquidators, who came and took all our stuff away. That's when the bank sells you up because it basically owns the house. There was a mortgagee's auction of our house. Guys, please, one life-changing shock at a time, I felt like saying. It was about a nanosecond later that my father dropped the bombshell-the family business was in the hands of receivers, he had been declared bankrupt, he was gay, and he was moving out. When my mother's great-aunt Adelaide died and left her a house, I thought it might take some pressure off the situation.

Was I like that frog not realizing the water's getting hotter till it's too late and he's soup? What went wrong? When? And how did I not notice?

Suspended on the Brooklyn Bridge eating falafels in the Marais in Paris underwater with blue-lipped clams off Green Island… Listening in from the upstairs landing one night, I understood in a single sick thud of my heart that my parents didn't even seem to like each other anymore. Our apparently comfortable life was an illusion propped up by some massive overdraft. Even in a place the size of ours, I could hear the fights. Things had been going wrong at my father's work. But when it happened to us, it had the opposite effect. If you can forget that it means someone just died, inheriting something is a good thing, isn't it? A stroke of luck.

Six Impossible Things by Fiona Wood