‘And I just want Death to Kevin!’ Emerald appealed. ‘Statistically, with chemo, one in three pancreatic cancer sufferers live another six years after diagnosis . . . You just have to beat the other two losers.’

‘Oh, there goes that warmth and compassion again,’ Amber said, with a sucked-on-lemon expression, throwing her hands in the air.

I looked at my two sisters. They were opposite in every way. To observe the Ryan girls from a distance, you wouldn’t think we were related. Whereas Emerald announces herself in a confident, full-volume boom, Amber speaks softly and breathlessly, as if always telling secrets.

While Amber is as glossy and nervy and stylish as a first-placed thoroughbred at Ascot, Emerald is more of a plodding draught horse. Her face is heavy and world-weary, without any delicacy, but her big eyes, strong mouth and defined eyebrows give her a handsome aspect, in contrast with Amber’s dainty features, which are as supple as her deft and slender fingers.

Their hair is also completely different. Amber’s is light as spun gold and usually piled up onto her head in a cloud, whereas Emerald’s chocolate-brown locks are cut short into a sensible bob – a helmet of hair she was now shaking at every one of Amber’s suggestions.

‘Let me book you in to my Korean health retreat. They do the most amazing deep-tissue detox.’

While Emerald maintains that the secret to good skin care is to be, well, Mediterranean, and the secret to beauty is to have Nordic parents who are prone to height, hair and Viking ice-blue eyes, Amber went in for exotic facials with obscure ingredients. Her most recent fad was discarded foreskins collected from South Korean circumcisions.

‘Maybe those bloody foreskin facials you so adore explain why you’re such a complete dickhead,’ Emerald deduced, violently ripping apart a bread roll and stuffing it into her mouth.

Where Amber was immaculately made-up at all times, waxed, tanned, trimmed and eyebrow-tinted, Emerald’s beauty routine took two to three seconds a day, during which time she used her car’s rear-view mirror to whack on some lipstick on the way to work. On special occasions, birthdays or New Year’s Eve, she would occasionally go all-out and add a dab of blusher.

Amber believed that most things in life could be cured by a mix of Pilates, chakra yoga, yogalates, acupuncture, angel channelling, astrological charting, craniosacral therapy, meditation, mindfulness, reiki, swearing off carbs and giving half your annual salary to a self-styled Intuitive Heart Healer who would awaken your inner Warrior; Emerald, on the other hand, felt most things could be cured with a Xanax tablet and a vodka bottle.