But Jess could never forgive Lily. Jess didn’t want to forgive her. Because if it hadn’t been for Lily, her dad and Zoe would still be alive today.

Chapter 46

June 1988

It is a Thursday afternoon. Years later, Jess will remember this detail because of the dampness of her hair against the back of her neck, the smell of chlorine clinging to her skin, the residue of that afternoon’s swimming lesson still sore in her eyes.

She is supposed to be doing her homework, has promised her mum that she will have it done by the time her parents return, so that the five of them can spend their first evening together in more than two months.

Zoe is coming home from the hospital today. Jess cannot concentrate on her school work, is too distracted by thoughts of all the things she will do with Zoe once she’s home. Her sister has been at Great Ormond Street Hospital for almost nine weeks this time, and Jess cannot wait to have her sleep in the room next door again, cannot wait to watch films beside her, read stories with her, tell jokes to her. She has a conviction—a certainty she has shared with no one—that this will be the last time Zoe will ever have to go to the hospital, that this time she is coming home for good.

She looks down at her exercise book—religious studies, her least favorite subject—and cannot muster the motivation she needs to answer ten questions about the Good Samaritan. At ten years old, homework is the last thing Jess wants to do when she gets home from school. Instead she emerges from her bedroom, thighs sticky with the early June heat, convinced that a chocolate Hobnob cookie—perhaps two—will help provide the enthusiasm she needs.

She hears Lily’s voice before she reaches the top of the stairs, before Lily has a chance to see her. Her sister is on the phone in the hallway to one of her friends, whose identity Jess will never know.

“Yeah, she’s coming home today. Mum and Dad are collecting her now . . . No, neither of them asked—I don’t think they even remembered they were happening.”

Jess crouches behind the banisters on the landing, her breath shallow in her chest.

It is rude to eavesdrop, Jess knows this, but it is a habit she seems unable to break. It is something Lily complains about frequently, causing the ridges across their mum’s forehead to deepen, like a paper napkin folded back and forth in the making of a fan. It is this sight—her mum’s weariness at having to mediate their squabbles—that provokes the feeling Jess has had ever since Zoe first became ill fourteen months ago: the feeling that someone has taken a pin and punctured her lungs so that all the air is slowly escaping.

“Yeah, I know they’re only end-of-year exams, but still . . .” Lily’s voice sounds strange, as though anger and sadness are performing a complicated dance in her mouth. “Sometimes it just feels like they’ve forgotten they’ve still got two other children. It’s like we don’t exist anymore . . . I don’t know, I can’t really explain it . . . No, that’s fine, you get off . . . Yep, I’ll see you tomorrow . . . Bye.”