Emma cried out again. She was shut up in her bedroom calling out for me. Me – the only person who knew the truth. Me – the only person who could tell her what was going on. Tell her the real reason she was here.

The question was: should I tell her? If I told Emma that Mother had taken us from our real parents, what would she do? She was only five years old. I was thirteen and I was having a hard time getting my head round it. How would someone so little cope with the fact that she’d been stolen from her parents? People she still remembered and loved.

My throat tightened. I didn’t remember my mummy and daddy. Not at all.

I wondered what that meant. I was only three years old when she took me from them, but surely I should recall something. Anything. Like the sound of my mummy’s voice or my daddy’s laugh or the way it felt to be cuddled and held by them.

Emma called my name again. I looked at the door and listened. Nothing sounded other than her fists hammering against her bedroom door. It was safe, for now, but something held me back from going to her.

‘Mirabelle! Mirabelle! Please! I’ve got something to show you!’

With a thick swallow, I pushed myself to my feet and opened the door. Without leaving the room, I said, ‘What is it?’

‘Come and talk to me. Please. I don’t like being alone.’

‘What is it you want to show me?’

‘A picture. I drawed it.’

‘But the door’s locked. I can’t come in.’

‘Oh. I really want you to see. It’s good. It makes me happy.’

‘Tell me about it then.’ I stepped onto the landing and winced at the creak of the floorboard under my foot.

‘OK – oh! I just had an idea! I can push it under the door!’

I looked down. Through the gloom, I saw a sliver of white paper slide under her door.

‘What do you think?’ she said excitedly.

I leaned over the banister and listened carefully to make sure Mother’s car wasn’t grumbling towards the house. Certain it wasn’t, I hurried along the landing, bent down and picked up the piece of paper.

‘It’s lovely,’ I said, turning it this way and that to try to work out what she’d drawn.

‘It’s Mummy – my old mummy, sorry – and my old daddy. Do you like it?’

My stomach twisted and turned like the random colours she’d scribbled across the paper; if Emma told Mother about this, she wouldn’t like it.

‘It’s really good, but … don’t show it to Mother, OK?’

There was a beat of silence. ‘Why?’