Beth stares at her hand. Red raw from scratching, but also littered with marks from years of abuse. She tracks each faint scar with her eyes. Will Eddie tell her dad the truth? That his last vision was watching his sister hand him the syringe, and how he didn’t think for a second that she’d tampered with it, until the hit wasn’t what he expected? That instead of euphoria, he felt his body shut down. Will her dad know that she did it for him and her mum? Eddie was destroying all their lives, not just hers. Will he remember that?

‘Are you there, my darling?’

‘Eddie wasn’t so great,’ she whispers.

‘You’re upset. It’s a lot to take in.’

‘He was a smackhead, Mum. And a thief.’

‘He was ill. He would have recovered if he’d been given the chance, just like you did after your stay at the unit.’

A ball of fury fizzes inside Beth’s head. ‘Don’t compare us!’ she cries. ‘Eddie and I weren’t the same.’

‘Oh you were for a long time, inseparable even, like twins. But then you changed. You started staying out until late, and being withdrawn at home. Eddie missed you. He wanted to help, to draw you out of your shell, but we seemed to be the problem, not the solution.’

‘Eddie was the problem,’ Beth reminds her. The fat lump is pulling Saskia to her feet now. There’s a trail of bile snaking down the nosy bitch’s chin. Beth feels her chest sinking inwards, tightening up. ‘He was the drug addict, Mum. The poison. Throwing up on our carpet.’

‘He only did that once, Elizabeth. And that wasn’t the drugs – it was when he had a stomach bug.’

Beth’s mind crashes and bounces. ‘No, that’s not true. It was all the time.’

‘Dr Sharp talked about this, do you remember? How your illness would distort your memory. Eddie was an addict, yes. And at times that made him behave badly. But mostly, he was his old self. Kind and funny, full of ideas. Like you, I suppose.’

Beth can’t listen anymore. To the lies. She drops her arm, feels the handset slip out of her grip. The tinny sound of her mum calling her name repeats a few times, but she pushes them away, and finally the sound dies. How dare her mum make such ridiculous claims? Beth is not like Eddie. He was the fuck-up, the failure, the weak link. She was the saviour, the one strong enough to get away, to build a perfect life. An image of her winter boot comes into her head, the shimmer of a dozen pill strips, but she pushes it away.

‘I think you strangled him.’ Saskia’s voice is so quiet, void of drama, not like her at all really. ‘And you tried to kill me.’