Lily doesn’t know if she believes the platitude about time healing—she has only just turned sixteen and sometimes feels as though she doesn’t really know anything at all—but people have said it to her so frequently and with such conviction that she is hoping if she repeats it often enough it may come true.

Still Jess says nothing. Impatience inches toward the surface of Lily’s skin.

“Jess, come on. I know you’re upset, but you’re not the only one. It’s hard for all of us, today especially.”

Jess turns to her and there is such fury in her expression that Lily feels it sting her cheeks as fiercely as if she has been hit. The same cold dread she has been feeling for months creeps down her spine. She knows that Jess blames her for everything that has befallen their family over the past six months but every time she feels close to asking the question directly—every time she is on the verge of pressing Jess for an answer—she finds her courage abandoning her.

The music on the radio downstairs changes and Lily hears the first verse of “In the Bleak Midwinter.” She leans forward, wanting to find some way of soothing Jess’s anger, not just for her own sake but for their mum’s. She reaches out and places a hand gently on her sister’s elbow.

“Jess, please—”

“Don’t touch me! Don’t ever touch me. I don’t want you anywhere near me! I hate you.”

Jess pulls back her arm with such force that her hand swings through the air, clipping Lily’s chin. Lily staggers to her feet, steps back, and touches her face where the skin is hot. Then she turns and flees. She closes the sitting room door behind her, slumps onto the bottom step of the stairs, and buries her head in her hands.

Plenty of times, in the heat of the moment, she and Jess have said that they hate each other but Lily has never believed either of them actually means it. She has never believed it until now. Lily cannot help feeling that if Jess were given a choice as to which of her family members would no longer be alive this Christmas, it would be Lily she’d willingly sacrifice, a feeling that compounds Lily’s grief. After they have already lost so much, Lily misses Jess and craves being close to her, a need Jess has repeatedly rejected. Now Lily can only hope that when Jess’s grief begins to fade, so too will her rage, and that Lily will eventually be permitted back into her sister’s life.

What are you up to for Christmas?

Lily hears the echo of a question that had been asked again and again during the final week of term. It was all anyone had talked about at school. All the endless chatter about family get-togethers, parties, presents. Lily had tried to avoid it but when someone had asked her directly, the lie had tripped off her tongue before she’d even known it was inside her head: a story about a parallel fantasy Christmas. A big house in the countryside—the Cotswolds, she’d said, even though she’d never actually been there—with a large extended family who existed only in her imagination.