But now here she is and so is he. Not a physical presence, but might as well be. She can see him, although her eyes are closed and he, her older brother, is younger than her, which is confusing and obscene. He is supposed to be a decade her senior, as he was when she met him, a twenty-two-year-old streak of trouble bursting into their family. A product of her dad’s early oat-sowing, the adults said, which made her think of her dad in a field, scattering seed and walking away. And Steve sprouting up from there, coming into being, big brown eyes blinking, wondering how exactly he’d come to be alive and all alone among the oats. She never stopped thinking of him that way, a creature brought into the world without care; a boy waking up alone, realising no one is with him, no one is coming.

Poor Steve, who turned up at the door one night, the scrap of paper with their address trembling between his fingers, which had the nails bitten below the quick, just like Nic’s. He told them over tea how on his eighteenth birthday his mum had told him his real dad’s name. It had taken two years to find him, a few months to adjust to the knowledge the man was in prison, then another couple of years of letters and phone calls before he’d been told about the two half-sisters who’d been living twenty minutes away their whole lives. So here he was.

Mum was kind to Steve, told him he was always welcome, but she didn’t ever look at him, not properly. Nic noticed it first, mentioned it to Michelle, who told her she was stupid but then, weeks later, announced it herself as though she’d been the one to see. Announced it to Steve, not to Mum. Steve stuck his finger up, walked out of the room. Nic realised he’d probably always noticed it, the not looking. It was Nan who explained why, though she didn’t know that’s what she was doing. She met him at Christmas lunch that first year they knew him and straightaway said, ‘Geez, you’re the spit of your dad.’