The fantasy tugged at Jess’s heart. It would be so easy to let out a single word that would make her mum happy. But then a memory crept into her head: lying in bed with Zoe that final night, reading her poems, watching her eyelids flutter, wishing she could share whatever deep sleep her sister was in, not knowing then that it would be the last time she would ever see her. Not knowing that the next morning she would spy Lily emerging from the spare room, see her barricade herself against the door, and watch the guilt, fear, and panic burn in her eyes.

“I can’t. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

“You have to, Mum! First-class tickets to New York? You can’t say no. I’ll go with Granny if you don’t want to.”

Jess shook her head, confirming a decision she knew to be right.

“Why not, Mum? It’s five days, that’s all. Stop being so selfish. It’s not all about you, you know.” Mia’s voice was laced with frustration.

Jess looked at her daughter, wishing there was some way to explain the past without having to tell her anything at all. “Mia, please. There are lots of things you don’t understand.”

“Oh, I know. You’ve been telling me my whole life there are things I don’t understand: that I’m too young or they’re too complicated. But don’t you think you owe it to Granny, to Aunt Lily, to tell them at least why you won’t go?”

Aunt Lily. Three short, clipped syllables and yet enough to cause all the moisture to evaporate from Jess’s mouth.

She looked at the four of them, watching her, waiting for an explanation they thought they wanted to hear, an explanation that, once heard, could never be unheard. A story that would haunt them just as it had haunted Jess all these years. She knew she couldn’t do it to them. She wouldn’t do it to her mum. “I can’t. It’s complicated. I just can’t.” Jess looked down, picked at the skin around the base of her thumbnail, tore at the cuticle until the first drop of blood oozed through.

“Please reconsider, Jess. It’s only five days. Just five days with both of you—that’s all I’m asking.”

Jess watched as her mum reached across the table, as familiar fingers enfolded her hand and a sequence of memories flickered into view.

Waiting outside the classroom with Zoe, her collar rubbing against her neck, the line of pegs hanging with coats, bags, and cardigans: so many, how would she ever find out who they all belonged to? Something invisible bouncing around her stomach, like jumping beans. And then the squeeze of her mum’s hand reassuring her that her first day at school was going to be OK.

Perched on a stool in the kitchen, hot tears soaking her cheeks, her left forefinger bent at an angle that even a seven-year-old could see wasn’t right, her discarded bike lying on the kitchen floor, wheels still spinning. Her mum grabbing the car keys, calling to Lily to look after Zoe, mentions of hospitals and breakages and emergency departments. And then the clutch of her mum’s hand telling her there was nothing that couldn’t be fixed.