It’s one Mum had taken of my friend Jill and me that last summer. We were sitting on the sand, our heads so close that tendrils of our hair wound together – mine, tinged golden from the sun, and Jill’s amber curls floating in the wind. We had such different hair, yet blended together it created something beautiful.

I run my fingers over Jill’s face. If I close my eyes I can hear her laugh, but in this photo she isn’t smiling. Mum had caught us unawares and I can still hear Jill’s urgent whisper in my ear, ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ before Mum shouted out at us to ‘Say cheese for the camera!’ I wonder if Mum had noticed then that something wasn’t right.

I snap the book shut and inhale a deep breath that catches in my throat. I had kept my promise that I wouldn’t tell for the whole summer, but in the end I hadn’t been able to keep it. Maybe that had been a mistake, but it’s too late to consider that now.

Chapter Three

The following day I contemplate how lunch with Bonnie will play out since our conversations about Evergreen have always been strained. I put it down to the fact we saw our upbringing in starkly different lights. Sometimes I wonder how we could have come from the same family when our perceptions of growing up are so different.

Bonnie opens the door and stands aside, ushering me into the long hallway and out of the rain that hasn’t stopped since last night. ‘Luke’s still sick. He ended up not going away,’ she says as she brushes past and leads me to the kitchen at the back of the house.

‘Oh? What’s wrong with him?’

‘A cold.’ She sighs loudly. ‘He’s in bed. Complaining. I told him not to come out in case he’s contagious.’

‘You could have come to my house instead of keeping your husband upstairs,’ I say.

She looks taken aback at the suggestion. ‘I’d already got lunch.’

I raise my eyes at her lack of compassion as I slip my coat off and hang it on a hook by the back door.

‘What do you want to drink, tea or coffee?’

‘Tea. Thanks.’

‘I was looking forward to him getting out of my hair this weekend. He’s doing my head in.’

‘He’s always doing your head in,’ I say, thinking of my poor brother-in-law upstairs and imagining at some point he’ll appear to say hello anyway.

‘Well, he’s been more irritating than usual. He’s signed the boys up for boxing classes, can you believe it? Why the hell does he think I want them boxing?’ She stops when her oldest, Ben, comes into the room.

‘I want to do boxing, Mum,’ he says. ‘You said I could.’