Over the years there have been many occasions when I’ve walked away from my sister with an unsettling sense that things weren’t right. In the early weeks of Bonnie being sober, I was constantly on edge. I knew when she’d snuck in a drink because I could read the signs clearly. Guilt was etched on her face, her fingers jittering with fear that she’d be caught out. As the years passed, and she subsequently stopped drinking, it’s become harder to read, though I’ve never stopped looking.

Any other time I would have been paying more attention.

I slam my front door behind me, furious with myself and even more so with Bonnie. The last thing I need is for all my concentration to be focused on her and I hate that it even crosses my mind that this is why she’s doing it. Danny is the one who needs me right now.

I throw myself on to my bed, lying on my back, and in each direction I look, photos of the past peer back at me.

Me and Mum on the beach, our hair whipped up above our heads in the wind. We are laughing as we look at each other.

Dad and I on the jetty, him crouching down to my height, his checked cap on, our cheeks pressed together, our smiles wide. We both hold an ice-cream and I have a splodge of his on the end of my nose from where he tapped me with it.

In nearly all the pictures Dad is wearing his cap – the one Mum had bought him one birthday and he proclaimed he would never take off. He wore that cap every day as far as I remember. He was wearing it the time I saw him with Iona and somehow this makes his deceit much worse.

I turn away, training my eyes on a different photo that sits on a shelf the other side of the room. This one’s of me and Jill, our arms linked tightly through each other’s to protect a bond we would never break.

I move on quickly, my eyes flicking along the shelf.

Bonnie, Danny and me all lined up stiffly beside each other like we had nothing in common apart from the fact we were siblings.

Next to it, Danny and me hanging out of the treehouse. My face full of laughter at something Mum must have said. Danny’s is a blank as it always was, his eyes staring far into the distance.

I curl on to my side, pulling up my knees and wrapping my arms around them, closing my eyes so I don’t have to look at the pictures any more. Not when they make the walls close in on me until I can’t breathe.

And not for the first time, I envy my sister for having a drug to clutch on to.