How did she know that? Why hadn’t David, who had been clumsily ambidextrous all his life?

The twins were separated in the third grade, to give them emotional distance from the other. At the time, David was convinced that Diana had been sent to be among the slower and sillier children, and there may have been some truth in that, for Diana’s stubbornness made her an uneven student. She not only refused to use her right hand but refused to read aloud any story she didn’t like, and, since most stories reflected David’s view of the world rather than her own, she was often silent.

David missed her with what he later recognized as that mixture of emotions which overcomes people trying not to fall in love. He dreaded seeing her in the halls or on the playground and looked for her everywhere. His pack of friends, somehow sensing that tension, would at the sight of her begin to chant, ‘There’s your stupid sister. There’s your stupid sister.’ If she looked at David, he made a face. If she didn’t, something as sour and heavy as tears lodged in his throat.

At home he couldn’t leave her alone. He stole her pencil box, hid her shoes, tied up the dolls she now neglected, put dog turds on her pillow, worms in her milk. Sometimes she ignored him. Sometimes, if what he had done was really terrible, she’d hide or break a favourite toy of his, but more often she simply cried.

Their mother never spanked either of them. Their punishment was to be sent to their now separate rooms where David read his big-little books or listened to the radio, trying to pretend he liked being alone. Diana often exiled herself, preferring her own company, but David would choose anyone, even his sister, to avoid being by himself.

From the moment David realized he was supposed to be superior, he was terrified he wasn’t really. It was a cruel trick being played on him rather than on Diana. If you were a girl, you didn’t have to be somebody; you could be yourself. Nobody cared, or cared as much. Yet he wouldn’t have dreamed of trading places with her.

It took their mother as long as two years to decide to marry again because David got along so badly with Hugh Bacon, the man she wanted to marry. Hugh wasn’t in those early days unkind to David, or at least not often and then under such provocation that even David had to acknowledge it. He didn’t like to have fun when Hugh Bacon was around.

‘How about a game of catch?’ Hugh would suggest.

‘That’s okay.’ David would shrug to let Hugh know that he didn’t have to put himself out on David’s account. David was willing just to hang around the house keeping an eye on Hugh.