You’re a savvy reader, so you probably already noticed there are a couple of empty seats at the family lunch table. I already told you Erin is driving in tomorrow. Katherine’s only child isn’t coming – this is Amy of the peanut-butter sandwich incident – because she lives in Italy and the importance of this reunion was about a five-to-seven-hour drive and no more. But it should be no surprise that Michael’s not in this scene either. I might, sort of, be responsible for that.

So now you know a few things: why my mother refuses to speak to me; why my brother isn’t there yet; why he’s looking forward to fresh sheets and a cold beer; why I couldn’t conjure up my usual excuse to get out of the weekend; why Lucy is dolled up; why Katherine bolded ‘all of us’ on the invitation.

It had been three and a half years since I knelt in spider webs and watched my brother murder a dying man. Three years since my mother walked out of a courtroom while I was explaining to a jury how he did it. And in less than twenty-four hours, he would arrive at Sky Lodge a free man.

CHAPTER 4

Ever since the funeral, with its folded flag perched ominously on top of the coffin and pews filled with white-gloved, polished-gold-buttoned officers, I’ve known what it feels like to be an outcast. A policeman’s funeral shows the best and worst sides of brotherhood. How it can provide place and pride for many – I saw an officer, hexagon cap cradled in his elbow, flick open a Swiss Army knife and carve an infinity symbol into the coffin’s wood, an eternal bind – but clamp shut to others. I remember an argument in the foyer with the dead man’s two families – one of blood and marriage, and one of blue uniforms – each insisting that they knew what was best: cremation or burial. It was a futile fight, won by blood in the end and the body buried. Legally it made sense, but I also assume cops sit in patrol cars and have ‘if I die’ conversations, like soldiers folding friends’ letters into breast pockets, so who knows?

It was a busy funeral, more like a film set buzzing with activity than a reverential chapel. All the attention – the photographers out the front of the church, the swivelled heads and sideways glances, the shocked whispers: my God, those are his kids – taught me that there’s a difference between being watched and being seen. That much one-sided voyeurism – ‘his kids’ – forms a bubble around you, keeps you locked off. I remember looking at the whipped cream dripping off Mum’s otherwise pristine black dress as we walked out of that church and suddenly knowing two things, as sure as a child knows anything. Dad was gone. And we were in that bubble together.