This comment came as a surprise to Katrina; her mother had never before suggested that Katrina was pretty. It was true that in her last two years at school, boys had started paying her attention, but this had only disconcerted her, and she had ignored them until they lost heart. Katrina had always known, of course, that her mother was beautiful. She knew, too, that she herself looked nothing like her. It was dark-eyed Jill who took after their mother in appearance. In fact, there had been times in the past when Katrina’s mother had looked her up and down critically and said, “You got your looks from your father, unfortunately.” Her mother had suggested once or twice that it would be especially important for Katrina to show herself to be very sweet and biddable around men, because not everyone was lucky enough to be able to rely on their appearance.

Katrina was aware that she had reached adulthood with no clear sense of her own personality, no real idea of her likes and dislikes, or even where her own edges were. It was difficult to feel where her mother stopped and she began, and almost impossible to patrol those borders.

What she did have was a strong instinct for movement. It was the deepest, truest thing she knew. She had to get away, although she didn’t know how this could be achieved or whether her mother would let her go, or indeed if Katrina herself could even exist outside of her mother’s sphere (perhaps she would simply fade away as she moved clear of it, having no definition beyond those boundaries). Nevertheless, it had to be attempted. Katrina put her head down and focused on her work, even while her mother commented that she was wasting her time, that Katrina didn’t have the right temperament for reporting.

Jill, mostly absent from their lives over the past few years, proved an unexpected ally in this. She invited Katrina to stay with her in Edinburgh for a weekend, and they climbed in the rain to the top of Arthur’s Seat and ate cake on Princes Street, and then Jill made curry for tea in the tiny flat she shared with her boyfriend (a different one, Katrina was surprised to note, from the one she’d originally left to live with, or “eloped with”, as their mother liked to put it). Katrina had never had curry before, nor spent the night away from home. She was nervous around the boyfriend Chris, though he was very polite to her. Jill had cut her hair short and bleached it, and she was wearing bright red lipstick like Debbie Harry. In the evening, Jill and Chris smoked cigarettes that Chris rolled for them (Katrina refused one), and the three of them sipped red wine out of beakers as Jill cooked. Katrina thought her sister was the most glamorous person she’d ever met.