‘Yay, Wolfie’s home! Guess what? Dad’s making shepherd’s pie! It’s my favourite, and guess what? It’s Lou’s favourite too! Did you have fun at school? Are you going to be receiving today, Wolfie?’

Loud and clear, George.

Later, when everyone’s in bed, I creep downstairs to Lou’s room. Just to check. When I push open the door, she’s asleep with her bedside lamp still on. Not in the scrunched-up foetal position she melts into on her sofa holidays; on her back, one arm flung out wide on the bed, head turned away from the light.

I watch her sleeping and remember how happy she’d looked surrounded by people that aren’t me. I think of other times I’ve stood in doorways in the dark, counting to the rhythm of my mother’s sleep, and involuntarily catch my breath. Be careful what you wish for. I swallow numbers back down my pinhole throat and exhale. Because I did this. Three, two, one. Welcome to Ground Zero.

I miss her face, and I wish she’d wake up and turn around, just for a second.

I love her, quite madly.

33

Danny

‘Did you know more than 1300 planes fly in and out of Heathrow every day?’

‘Really? You been counting?’ Lou spent so much time with her head back looking up at the sky I wouldn’t have been surprised.

‘Funny. No, George told me. But he also told me Buzz Lightyear keeps a spare spaceship in the Qantas hangar, so it might need verifying.’

During our daily armchair rendezvous on the patio, Lou and I had graduated to something that wasn’t exactly breezy chat, but was so much more than polite small talk. Even when I brushed shoulders with the ghosts of my mother or father in something she said, the recognition felt more like nostalgia than stone-cold fear now. It wasn’t everything, but it felt like quite a lot. And it felt OK.

There were definitely things going on in my brain with no conscious input from me, though, because whenever I was around Lou or Wolfie, I’d feel my back instinctively straighten and the muscles in my face rearrange themselves to attention. I’d clear my throat and try to say something witty, or verging on intelligent, and then feel a warmth spread in my chest when they’d smile. Even a half-smile from Wolfie felt like a win, and that’s mostly what I got.

I found myself being regularly and – big surprise here – contentedly drawn back to memories of my childhood as I tried to nut out some helpful words of wisdom in response to the letters. Instead of turning tail, I allowed myself to mull them over and gave them room to settle, which was strangely calming after all those years I’d spent working so hard to do the opposite. And, spiritual fraud or not, I knew enough to realise that my newfound sense of surrender had everything to do with facing up to that other stranger. The one I’d thought was gone for ever. Danny Mulberry, brother. Son.