‘Really?’ I sat up straighter. The fact that Mother was opening up to me filled me with hope that I was not a lost cause. I was not going to die – not soon anyway. Mother still loves me.

I leaned forward, drawing forgotten, the mystery of the crusts pushed to the back of my mind.

‘Yes. Her name was Olivia. She was my twin.’

‘Your twin?’

My mind buzzed with this new information. Why had she not told me this before? If she had a sister, then I had an aunt. Why was Mother talking in the past tense? Was my aunt dead? But I knew better than to blast out loads of questions like bullets from a bank robber’s gun. If Mother wanted to tell me stuff, she would, in her own time.

‘Yes,’ she said solemnly.

‘Were you and her identical?’

‘You and she,’ she corrected.

‘Were you and she identical?’

She shook her head, her eyes glazing over. ‘We had the same blonde hair, but she was a great deal more beautiful than I was. She looked like the most perfect little doll you could ever imagine. Very like you, in fact. Everyone commented on her beauty. Complete strangers would stop in the street and give her compliments. Grandfather loved her for it.’

She moved over to my bed and sat down, beckoning me to join her. I got up from the desk and perched on the edge of the bed and she patted her lap, like she used to when I was little. I lay down and rested my head on her thighs, looking up into her face, thinking about how difficult it must have been for Mother, being the ugly duckling and always being second best.

The knots in my chest loosened and began to unravel as Mother’s fingers lightly stroked my forehead. She had not treated me so lovingly for a while now. Tears bubbled up but I suppressed them by focusing on the angular cut of Mother’s jaw, the way it moved as she talked.

‘Olivia was perfect,’ Mother repeated. ‘Grandfather thought she was an angel – his angel – and he spoiled her rotten. On the outside she looked so innocent and sweet and lovely, but on the inside she was pure evil. Rotten to her core.’

She went quiet for a while but continued to stroke my head.

‘What was he like?’ I said. I had asked about my great-grandfather before, but Mother never told me much.