Inside my head, the bombs were back and dropping fast. Me, lying in my bedroom, air thick with grief and angst and a feeling so dark that it scared even my teenage self into silence. Us, silent dinners, breakfasts, the three that were left, sitting in our own corners of the front room like pushed-back furniture. And Lou. Always there. Sidling up beside me, looking up at me, eyes wide, every day, still hopeful. Every minute of every day, reminding me of what she’d done.

Because with my thirteen-year-old boy-man logic, someone was always to blame for the bad stuff. You just had to figure out who.

I felt a rush of sadness that was so physical my grip on the bottle of saline released and it slipped to the floor. Neither of us moved as we watched the contents empty out on to the polished floorboards, and when the flow stopped and I finally looked at my sister, it was the strangest thing. For the first time I could see, very clearly, the face of the girl I’d left behind. The girl who’d grown up without me, and despite me.

‘Lou—’

I exhaled and my breath caught in my throat, turning it into several involuntary coughs. Here it comes, I thought. Here’s my moment, nothing’s surer. Lou waited until I’d finished, then reached out and put her hand on my arm with a tenderness I didn’t deserve.

‘It’s OK, Danny. Just say it. What were you going to say?’

I looked at that face, still hopeful. Still Lou, after all these years.

And then I was nine years old, pulling my own arse out of a stormwater drain and looking around for my little sister. Just for a second, I felt the same panic, the same fear in the pit of my stomach, and as I stared down at the puddle of saline spreading silently over Dom’s floor, I thought, Actually, I’m not sure it is OK.

‘I . . . I’d better get this cleaned up.’

And what if I still don’t forgive you? What if I can’t?

ANNA

Dear Danny Mulberry, you seem nice. I’m going to overlook the two-fingers-up thing, because I think we’d all like to do that once in a while and get away with it. You should probably know that being nice is my highest and only character judgement these days. If someone seems nice, which a lot of people do on first look, it’s all I need to spontaneously start a conversation. Even if it’s not asked for. Even when I can clearly see it’s not wanted. I don’t seem to care. Isn’t that odd?

Maybe you won’t think it’s so odd if I tell you my husband was nice too, and he’s what I need to talk about. If just a few hours surprise me by passing and I haven’t said his name out loud to another living soul, I feel crushed by guilt. Terrified that I’ve let him down in the hugest of ways. Because he’s disappearing a little bit more every day and it’s my fault. I can’t bear the thought of him fading away like a receipt I’ve forgotten in the bottom of my handbag, so I talk about him. To checkout operators, to bus drivers, to dry-cleaners, to old ladies and men in cafes, to dogs and all too often to cats. It doesn’t matter who it is, all that seems to matter is that I say his name. So I can remember he loved poetry and Bob Seger and his daughters, to distraction. That he drank good red wine and bad instant coffee, always took the smallest slice of cake but the largest piece of Roquefort, and that he couldn’t ride a bike to save his life but the man could rollerblade like a demon. And that he loved me.