Ben swallowed hard, his eyes flicking briefly toward Jess’s face, and Jess knew where the story must be heading but she also knew she needed to let Ben tell it. That now he’d begun, she must let him finish.

“It was seven weeks later that we got a knock on the door. I was nagging Erin because she was going to be late for school, so Nicole went to answer it, assuming it would be the mailman. As soon as I heard her coffee cup smash on the hallway floor, I knew. It’s weird. You’ve watched that scene so many times on TV, read about it in books, seen reports of it in the newspapers. It just felt unreal, as though we were characters in a film and this couldn’t possibly be real life.”

Jess heard her own intake of breath, felt the air suspended in her lungs, sensing there was more to come.

“It was an IED. Zach had been manning a checkpoint when a car had driven up with a single driver inside who’d detonated himself. Zach was the only casualty. Two army officers stood in our kitchen that morning telling us how proud we should be, how brave Zach was, how he’d done such a great service for his country, but all I could think about was what had gone through the head of that driver as he’d drawn up at the checkpoint, knowing what he was about to do. What kind of madness made him go through with it?”

Anger bled from Ben’s voice and Jess placed the flat of her hand on his back. “I’m sorry, Ben. I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”

She watched him train his eyes on the floor, breathing deeply, as though he didn’t yet trust himself to look her in the eye.

“You know the thing I find hardest about it? I don’t understand now why I let him go. Why didn’t I just lock him in a room until he’d got the stupid idea out of his system? I look back now and I think, What kind of a father lets his son walk out of the front door and into a senseless war?”

Ben’s voice was low and tight, as though his vocal cords were being squeezed.

“He was eighteen, Ben. He wanted to make his own decision. That’s what teenagers do. There’s nothing you could have done to stop him.”

“Isn’t there? It doesn’t feel like that now. Now it feels like I’d strap my body to his and never let him out of my sight if it meant he’d still be here.”

Jess blinked hard against images of Zoe that final night and her regret that she had ever left her sister’s side. “You have nothing to feel guilty about, Ben. Nothing to seek forgiveness for.” She thought about Lily standing outside Zoe’s bedroom door that morning and her determination to stop Jess venturing inside. All these years she had hated herself for not doing more—for not pushing Lily aside and forcing her way in—as though perhaps, if she had, she might have been able to save her twin’s life.