‘Tell me about this one, Mum,’ I’d say. Knowing full well the story behind the cowboy hat and tasselled boots she’d sported at the fancy-dress party where she’d met my father, also dressed (much more self-consciously) as a cowboy.

‘It was amazing, Danny,’ she’d say. ‘It was written in the stars, your father used to say. Meant to be.’ And she’d close her eyes for a second or two, as if she was trying to see her way through those dazzling stars to find the place it was written that her future was with a neat, kind, much older man whose only purpose in life was to love his family.

I remember thinking it was the most magical thing to be able to see your mother that way. Young. Fearless. Falling in love. Before she became a wife, a mother, and all the stuff that went along with that. And, if kneeling on the floor wrapping a gauze bandage around the mangled leg of my grown-up sister was the first time I’d thought about little Lou sidling up to try to get in on the action when we were looking at those albums, and Mum gently shooing her away as she hugged me closer, well, how could I be blamed? I was just a kid. I never knew where Lou went when she was shooed, because I’d never even thought about it. All I knew was that we were there. Me and my lovely mother.

Lou shifted her body slightly to take the weight off her cast. I’d been so deep in thought I’d almost forgotten she was there, but when she spoke again it was like she’d just paused for an in-breath.

‘She always loved you more, Danny, and I always knew that.’

As my centre of gravity shifted around the words, I realised I was closer to her than I’d thought and, as I nearly overbalanced again, our hands connected awkwardly. Without taking her eyes off me, Lou wrapped her fingers around mine and held on. My throat felt like I’d swallowed every grain of sand on Chesil Beach.

‘Lou . . .’ Longest beach in the country, according to George. Ah, Georgie, where are you now that my head really is in danger of exploding? Look what you’re missing. I could feel my breath cooling my lips as I silently opened and closed my mouth, and my sister pressed her fingers into my palm.

‘It’s OK, Danny. I didn’t mind.’ She smiled a long, sad smile. ‘I could see why.’

In the corner of the room, Gentleman twitched himself awake. He leaped up in surprise, taking the overhang of Laura Ashley sheet with him, and there was a high-pitched yelp as my tower of Walkers crisp boxes crashed to the floor.

Restacking the boxes gave me time to collect my thoughts and try to process what Lou had said. The thing is, as a kid I’d always accepted that Lou was the golden child; the special, long-awaited girl-shaped sun around which our family orbited. Because she really was all of that and more. And she made it impossible not to love her. But this older version of my sister had a completely different story from the one I’d carried with me all my life, so under the circumstances I wasn’t even that surprised at the symbolic avalanche of history. It seemed about right to me.