‘He’s at a friend’s too. I swear they spend more time at other people’s houses than they do at their own these days. I never see them.’ Bonnie dips her head. It’s easy to see how much she misses her boys even if she won’t say it. ‘I guess it’s what comes from going to a normal school and living in a normal city – the opposite of what we had. I can’t imagine what they’d be like if they had to live in the kind of confinement we did.’

‘Was there really not anything you liked about Evergreen?’ I ask her.

She turns to face me. ‘Nothing. I had no life, no friends—’

‘You did,’ I say, ‘there was Iona—’

‘One.’ She turns back to the stove muttering, ‘And that was only for one summer.

‘I thought of Danny the other day,’ Bonnie goes on. A leap of conversation for her. A missed heartbeat for me. ‘I don’t know what made me start thinking of him, but it was about a week ago.’

I don’t know what to say so I wait for her to continue.

‘No, actually I’m lying,’ she says. ‘I know very well what made me think of him. I saw this weird older kid at the boys’ rugby game. He was standing on the sidelines, just staring at the others. It reminded me of the way Danny used to do that.’

I pull at the paper napkin in front of me, tearing a little corner off and rolling it between my fingers.

‘Our brother freaked everyone out. I hated him for that …’ Her words trail off as if she’s no longer talking to anyone but herself. Bonnie pours soup into two bowls and brings them over to the table, going back for a loaf of bread and a knife.

‘You didn’t hate him,’ I say quietly as she sits down.

She widens her eyes at me. ‘I did. Since the moment he was born. I swear that was when everything changed – at least, that was when Mum started taking me to those stupid Stay and Play sessions on the mainland with the woman who used to try and make me talk.’

I open my mouth to ask about the sessions but Bonnie is already going on. ‘I could never believe you didn’t hate him. I never knew what you found to talk about when you both used to sit in that treehouse. You spent hours in that thing together.’

We did, but we’d never really talked. Instead we did our own things alongside each other, like little kids do before they learn how to play. Danny would draw while I read or played with my Barbie dolls.