Mum fills the house with the waft of bacon sandwiches, and it’s the time when our horrible past feels both the closest and the furthest away.

“Here he is,” Jay says, and Mum turns and grins.

Sometimes, for a few blissfully weird seconds, we feel like the families on TV. That’s why saying this is going to be so hard.

“Sit yourself down,” Mum says, scooping bacon from the pan.

I do what I’m told and watch silently as everyone joins me.

I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve started to enjoy this life more than I ever thought I would. I assumed I’d always be the outsider because Mum had Jay, and Nia had Aaron, and I was the odd one out. But that’s not how it is now.

Maybe it’s seeing the Pearces and feeling the horrible tension that fills their walls like invisible portraits. Maybe it’s digging so deep into Amy’s life that I realized ours is held together by more than hope.

Mum closed her eyes and put one last pin in what she hoped was forever. And she won. That’s why I can’t tell them. Not yet.

Every time I open my mouth to say Will is really Logan, Mum’s smile or Aaron’s giggle or Jay’s laugh stops me. This is an almost-perfect moment, and I can’t take it from them. So I eat, and I speak when I’m spoken to, and I try to laugh as loudly as everyone else. Even if, in the back of my mind, Logan’s face is haunting me.

Does he want to be rescued?

I think of all the times Mum could have escaped the bad people in her life but didn’t because something holds you in the most horrible places—the fear of what might happen if you leave.

Is he happier now? Does he remember his life before?

Even when you have an answer, the questions don’t stop.

“Are you okay?” Mum asks.

“He’s probably daydreaming about Amy,” Jay says, and the look I swap with Nia says he’s right but not in the way he thinks.

“Does Tom fancy Amy?” Aaron asks, and his sister can’t help but laugh then.

“I’m not sure it’s that simple,” Nia says, and then, looking straight at me, “is it?”

I push the fingers of each hand together under the table, then make sure all ten digits are touching the narrow strip of wood around the seat.

“I don’t fancy her,” I tell Aaron.

He blows a raspberry and says, “Finished.”

“So what do you say?” Mum replies.

“Please may I get down?”

Mum nods without looking at Jay, but Nia doesn’t give her evils like she used to. She doesn’t think my mum is stealing their mother’s job anymore.