The bus leaves the hanger at 3.50 a.m. and, as with all journeys involving other human beings in confined spaces, it is predictably irritating, long-winded and, at times, makes me wish I was dead. My phone runs out of charge four times, that’s how long it is. But I pass the time sleeping, texting Raf and checking out the contents of the envelope Tenoch left for me in the safety deposit box – he really has seen his gatita right.

It was good to have got the story out. I don’t know what Freddie will do with it – maybe he’ll make up some shit that I visited him before Seren shot ‘me’ dead, I don’t know. I don’t actually care. I think I wanted to get it all straight in my own head. There are so many rumours about where I’d been, what I’d done, how many dicks I’d severed en route, I want the truth to get out as well. Maybe I just wanted to talk to someone who had known the real me. The real me before I became the new me.

It’s an express service terminating at Rutland, so there aren’t too many stops – Ridgewood, Albany, Walloomsac, Shaftesbury. I alight at Manchester, half an hour away from the house according to Google Maps. I’ve scribbled the address down in my Notes app, swiped from an old Facebook post of Mabli’s, inviting all her classmates to her birthday party before she changed her security settings. I jump in another cab and arrive as the big yellow school bus pulls away from the kerbside at the bottom of their drive.

The box is still dripping and one corner is saturated to the point that the cardboard has begun to sag. I clamp it with my gloved hand and begin the gravel-winding, woodland walk up to the house.

Seren told me once it was ‘just like Honey Cottage’, our grandparents’ house in Wales. But it isn’t. For a start it’s about three times the size and it’s not stone-washed-white but clapboard white with a cobblestone path leading to an ornate green door. A Christmas wreath sways in the breeze. There are green-and-red fairy lights wrapped around the porch pillars and a sign stuck in the dirt saying, Santa Please Stop By. As I wend my way along the cobbles, I notice several mismatched flower pots beneath the porch. I put down the box on one of the pots and as I’m about to knock, the door flies open.

‘Oh, hey there, I was—’ She’s holding a watering can and it’s dripping from the spout. Intended for the pots, I presume. There’s no flicker of recognition as we stand face to face, sister to sister – me under the porch, Seren on her Welcome to the Gibsons coconut mat. ‘Oh sorry, I thought you were the mailman! Can I help you?’