‘Mum?!’ Met by silence, I wondered briefly if she’d gone back to the bottle – memories flooding back of Ruth’s many drunken stupors, when she would sometimes be found lying in a pool of piss on the bathroom floor when we girls got home from school.

My march into the kitchen became less confident as girlhood terrors returned. Was my mother lying in wait with the feather duster for a quick, painful thwack around the legs?

The big glass doors opening out onto the terrace were still wide open. I walked outside, trying to keep my nerve. My mother was lying, asleep, in the banana chair. Her paper Christmas hat sat at a rakish angle. Yesterday’s lunch lay uneaten and swarming with flies on the table.

‘Mum?’

The eyes of dingoes are yellowish grey, and alert yet neutral. That’s what Ruth Ryan looked like now, staring straight ahead, unperturbed. A shiver of ghostly shock ran through me. I shook my mother gently by the shoulder. Her body crumpled, as if my gaze had shrivelled her.

A jolt of pain and panic spread instantaneously through me from top to toe. I felt as though I were on a sinking ship and hadn’t paid attention during the muster drill, so had no idea how to find my lifeboat station. When I noticed the traces of pavlova still on my mother’s face and hair, a pathetic, wretched sob wrenched its way out of my throat.

I killed her! was all I could think. Quickly followed by I’m an orphan. But how could I be an orphan? It sounded so Jane Eyre. An orphan is a poor heroine in a dusty old novel who ends up in a workhouse.

I felt as though I’d been dropped through a wormhole into a crack in time. My unaware sisters were living above it. On their timeline, our mother was not dead. After sobbing bitterly for a five full minutes, I turned on my phone and texted my sisters through my tears.

SOS. Come to Mum’s immediately. Emergency. This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.

31

‘What are you doing here?’ were Emerald’s first words to Amber when they met on the porch as I opened the door. ‘You should be languishing in the outer ring of the seventh circle of hell.’

‘You can’t make me feel any worse than I already do.’ Amber closed her eyes and smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead. ‘Clearly it’s the most vile, thoughtless, stupid thing I’ve ever done in my whole life.’

‘Stop calling yourself stupid. You’re going to ruin it for everyone else.’