A thought skittered through Jess’s head, a thought so familiar it ought not to have hurt as much as it did: the question of what Zoe might have done with her life had she lived. And the same answer was waiting for her as it always was: that funny, fearless, spirited Zoe would have achieved so much more than Jess ever had. Sometimes Jess couldn’t help feeling that when the egg had divided in two, the wrong half had been given the faulty cells.

“I can’t wait to watch the whole concert back on TV. I hope they did a close-up of Granny during her solo. They probably did, didn’t they?”

Jess was about to reply when, over Mia’s shoulder, she saw her mum walk through the doorway to the restaurant. She was about to stand and wave when she registered two figures following closely behind, a sight that caused her stomach to twist into knots.

“For God’s sake, what are they doing here? What’s Mum playing at? Mia, get your things, we can’t stay.”

Jess rose to her feet and grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair as her mum, Lily, and Phoebe crossed the room toward them. She turned to Mia in preparation to leave. “Mia, didn’t you hear me? We’re leaving. I can’t believe Mum has done this. What on earth is she thinking?”

Mia stood up. But instead of picking up her bag and edging away from the table, she turned to the trio walking toward them and waved. And all at once Jess realized she’d been duped.

Chapter 43

Lily

It was too late to turn back. Lily glanced at her mum and saw in her face a quiet determination. She looked across the restaurant to where Jess was grabbing her bag from underneath the table, felt time stretch as though it knew, before the next second struck, that she had to make a decision.

She looked again at her mum, saw the naked desire to fix what was broken. And then she was following her mum and Phoebe through the thoroughfare of tables to where Jess was standing with her jacket draped over her arm, her face stony with rage or hatred, Lily wasn’t sure which.

“Why are you doing this, Mum?”

It was strange how one forgot. How time or self-preservation eroded the memory of Jess’s brusqueness: the accusatory tone and the clipped consonants.

Lily looked at Jess, unsure whether she wanted her sister to meet her gaze or not. She remembered all those times after Zoe’s death that Jess had left the room whenever Lily had entered, when her questions had been met with monosyllabic answers. She thought about all the occasions she had apologized to Jess without knowing what she was supposed to have done wrong. All the times she had wished—for their mum’s sake, if no one else’s—that Jess could cast off her anger, like a caterpillar shedding its skin. Mostly what Lily thought as she stood opposite her sister, feeling the heat of Jess’s rage, was that she wished she could turn back the clock twenty-eight years to the morning she had stood on the landing with her hand on the doorknob to the spare bedroom, and choose not to go inside.