Stella was in the room. Ali slipped her phone away and smiled at her daughter. How often had Stella done this, through the years; appeared silently at Ali’s bedside like a spirit child in the night?

‘Can I sleep with you?’ she asked, as Ali had known she would.

Ali patted the mat. ‘It’s a bit hard,’ she said. ‘But the flags above are pretty.’

Stella lay down beside her, looking up. ‘Is it bunting?’

‘Tibetan prayer flags.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘Here.’ Ali passed Stella one bud of her earphones, which she’d now plugged back into her iPod. ‘Let’s fall asleep together to something mellow.’

Beside her, Stella snuggled into her, sighed, and closed her eyes.

10

SHEFFIELD,
7 JANUARY 1979

Peter was six years old when baby Alison was brought home from the hospital and, though no one expected him to, he’d loved her as soon as he laid eyes on her, a squalling bundle, red-faced, furious, unsafe in their mother’s arms. He’d been afraid Catherine would drop her, because she’d already – famously – dropped him; everyone talked about it, the time she lost her footing on the stairs and tumbled to the kitchen floor, breaking baby Peter’s fall with her own body, as if she was heroic, as if it wasn’t her fault in the first place. Young as he was, Peter couldn’t understand why other grown-ups laughed at this story. He watched his sister, this baby, as Catherine carried her into the house for the first time, plonked her down on the settee like a parcel and reached for the drink that someone handed to her. All the adults in the room said, ‘Cheers!’ and Catherine said, ‘Make the most of it, Geoff, because there won’t be another one.’

This was Peter’s earliest memory; Alison roaring with newborn rage and nobody but him seeming to care, and the hot fire warming the room beyond comfort, the perilous, clumsy clink of glasses, his mother’s laughter.

In Alison’s first memory she was perhaps three years old, and sitting, in shorts, T-shirt and sandals, on the kerb of the pavement in the street, the same Attercliffe street where they still lived. She had no concept of time, but it was dusk, approaching dark, and all the children from the neighbouring houses had gone, called inside from the street by their mothers, one or two at a time, until Alison was alone. The chalk lines of hopscotch were on the pavement, there was a ball in the gutter which she could just reach with her left foot, and Alison’s bare legs were very cold. She waited and waited, until Peter came, swinging a kit bag and whistling. They waved, and she was very glad to see him. He gave her a cuddle and then let her into the house with the key he wore on a string around his neck.