It was that first night, with Eddie. They’d both been drunk; fell into bed together, making love in a weary, automatic sort of stupor. She’d woken in the morning, not sure of anything anymore. She’d never been the sort of person to get drunk and fall into bed with someone. It left her with an odd mixture of emotions. Looking back, she wasn’t sure that any of them were good. At the time, she’d pulled herself out of the tangled array of sheets and into the bathroom, taking her clothes with her and quickly shrugging into them. She’d wanted to shower, but in her fragile state was afraid that the rattling of the old pipes would wake the whole building and not just Eddie. Instead, she’d sat at her small kitchen table and drank tea for over two hours while Eddie snored oblivious to the mounting stress that she was feeling.

And now she looked back on it, she could see so clearly what she’d worked so hard to hide from herself that morning – it was never right between her and Eddie. None of it was ever going to fit. They were just too different – oil and water, sugar and vinegar. She would never have picked out Eddie Quirke as someone she’d want to spend five minutes with, never mind truly consider agreeing to marry him one day. Actually, hoping and wishing for him to propose to her – God, what on earth had happened to her?

She wondered this briefly as she opened up the locket in her hands.

Was it grief, desperation or loneliness? Yes, she could admit, a little of all three probably propelled her into a relationship that she knew wasn’t right from the start. Looking back, she probably knew that Eddie had never bargained on anything more than a convenient shag and a free roof over his head. That was all it had been for him, an open pass and she’d been the one who’d made it into something it was never meant to be.

This was, all of it, in many ways, a disaster of her own making. She looked down at the photograph in the locket. It was a copy of one that they’d had taken years ago, she and Rachel – identical twins looking out at her as if surveying her from another world. If Rachel had been alive, there would have been no room for Eddie. If Rachel were alive… How often had she wished for that?

And now, it seemed as if finding this locket, she’d somehow come full circle. As if Rachel was still clearing the way for her. She examined it carefully. It seemed almost strange holding it in her hand, as if it had been shot through time, an arrow hitting its bull’s-eye; making reality stand still and yet, so much had changed since Rachel had given it to her before she died.