‘She was well looked after and you know it,’ Cynthia adds. ‘There was always good food.’

This is true. During the months Lila was here, there was money, and there was food. I don’t know why I never made that connection before. Payment for minding her. Hiding her away.

‘Next question – where is she buried? Why wasn’t I allowed to go to her funeral?’

‘Make me another drink.’

Suppressing a sigh, I bring the bottle in from the kitchen and fill her glass to the brim with the cheap supermarket whiskey.

It’s two-thirds gone before she answers, and when she does, it isn’t an answer at all.

‘She’s buried somewhere safe.’

‘Where though? I’d … I’d like to visit her grave. You never let me.’ The plaintive tone of my voice grates on me but I can’t help it.

‘You can’t visit. Anyway, she wasn’t your sister, so let it go.’

Dismissed earlier than usual, I’m letting myself out of the door of her flat when I pause outside the bedroom. Lila’s bedroom. I haven’t been in there since the night she died – Cynthia kept it locked even after Lila was gone. Can I bring myself to go in there now? Cynthia is almost but not quite asleep on the couch. This is as good a chance as I’ll get.

The handle turns easily. The door is stiff at first, but one gentle push is enough to get me quietly inside. The room is dark and musty and full of dust. It looks untouched. As though nobody has cleaned it in thirty years. A cough lurches in my throat and I swallow it back as I make my way across to the bed. Yellowing sheets and a brown coverlet, stenched with the passage of three decades. Had she even washed them after Lila died? The sheets are crumpled, the coverlet pulled to one side. Maybe she hadn’t. On the floor beside the bed lies an empty glass, the water long gone. Bits of paper. Sweet wrappers. Medicinal sugar for when she was low. Notebooks; some mine, some Lila’s. Her still-baby letters drawn so carefully. My attempts at playing teacher. A hairbrush. An illustrated copy of Charlotte’s Web. Tears rear up as I remember reading it to her. Beside the book is a vial and syringe and this is the sight that overwhelms me. Before I know what’s happening, I’m kneeling on the floor, sobbing. Quiet, gulping sobs for the little girl who died. And the other little girl, who didn’t mean to kill her. I pick up the vial of insulin. The vial that once contained insulin – there’s nothing in it now. How can one liquid be so necessary for survival and so lethal? I think back to the daily injections I’d seen my mother give. Three times every day, once before each meal. At least at first. As time went by, she didn’t always think of it. Sometimes she was too busy injecting herself with whatever her various dealers supplied that week. And sometimes she wasn’t here at all. I remember asking her about it. Why did Lila need insulin? For her blood sugar, my mother said. Is it medicine? Is she sick? I’d asked. A sigh. Yes, it’s medicine, yes, she’s sick. Now stop with all the questions.