She thought about her mum’s last words to her in the park: I just want you two to be sisters again. Can you try and do that for me?

As Lily tried to work out how to restart a conversation that had fallen silent years ago, she realized that there were so many ways to begin, yet no way of knowing which might lead to the right ending. “How are you feeling?” The question felt strange in Lily’s mouth, as though her brain and her voice box had conspired to let it out without asking her first.

Jess glanced up at her—fleeting, furtive—then looked back down at the table, tearing at the corner of a paper napkin. “I’m not sure. Confused. Angry. Humiliated. Take your pick.”

Neither spoke for a moment, a carousel of recent memories revolving in Lily’s head: Daniel and the redhead and the new baby Lily would have given anything to be her own; the tone of Jess’s hatred as she’d finally voiced an accusation so much wilder than anything Lily had ever imagined; her mum’s expression as she’d turned to Lily, realizing that Lily had known all along.

“I just hate the fact that everyone else knew the truth about how Zoe died and I didn’t. Why didn’t you tell me?” Jess’s voice was quiet, just the lightest ripple on the surface to hint at the rip current beneath.

Lily thought about all the times she’d yearned to confide in her sister. All those evenings in the office, staring at a computer screen in lieu of facing her memories. All those early mornings in the gym, pounding her feet on a treadmill in an effort to pummel thoughts from her head. All those nights lying awake next to Daniel, wishing she could creep downstairs and call Jess to describe the scene that had haunted her for years. Somewhere in Lily’s mind there had always been a parallel life, one in which she had told Jess the truth and, in doing so, had cemented a bond between them.

“When should I have told you? I couldn’t have told you at the time: you were only ten. It was bad enough for me knowing and I was fifteen. It would have completely destroyed you. And by the time you were old enough to know, you weren’t speaking to me anymore. I tried, Jess. I tried to have a relationship with you but you didn’t want to know.” Frustration spilled from Lily’s voice and she stopped herself before the rift between them deepened.

“So you’re saying that if I hadn’t cut you out of my life, you’d have told me the truth?”

Lily was about to nod but then she replayed Jess’s question, dug deeper for an answer. An image shuttered in her mind like the split-second opening of a camera lens: arriving home that day to the parked police car on the curb outside, her heart rising into her throat as she walked through the hallway and into the sitting room to find her mum and Jess locked in grief. A look on her mum’s face not only of shock and horror but of something else too: fear wrapped in a guilt so thick that Lily couldn’t imagine her mum ever being free of it.