A little while later, when I brought out her duvet and picked up the album to put it away, she opened her eyes and just lay there looking at me for a few seconds.

‘Everything passes, Wolfie. Even happiness,’ is what she said.

36

Danny

‘Growing yourself quite the little garden there, aren’t you, Danny?’

I was unwinding the bandage on Lou’s leg when I felt something brush the top of my head. Thinking it was a fly, I flicked my hair before realising my mistake. I froze, not wanting to offend, and she gently fluffed a few bits of my hair with her fingers. I glanced up and I could tell the words hadn’t been a coincidence. When our eyes met we both smiled, and it was so easy.

‘Wow, you remember that?’

‘Yeah, I do. I mean I did, just now. I think . . . it kind of feels like my brain’s been waking up, just lately. All sorts of things just seem to be popping into my head, out of the blue.’ Tell me about it. ‘Not to mention all the questions George keeps coming up with. He’s definitely been making me think.’

I bent forward to examine her leg. The wound was clean and pink, the edges of the volcano continuing their steady march, a millimetre a day – the pace actually seemed to have picked up a bit lately. I couldn’t help delivering a mental pat on my own back. Casualty, here I come!

‘Yeah, sorry about that. He’s kind of an unstoppable force, our George.’

‘No, no, I love it. He’s so . . . he’s great. And it’s good, it’s better than good. I don’t think I’ve really let myself think about a whole lot of things for a very long time. Good things, I mean.’ Lou shrugged and shook her head. ‘That’s weird, isn’t it?’

Not to me. Not weird at all, to me, although I didn’t say it. Because I knew only too well that out of sight wasn’t out of mind at all, and there are times things can be lurking around a lot closer to the surface than you think. Times like this, when something your sister says grabs you by the scruff and reefs you back through the decades.

Thirteen years old. My mother cutting my hair on a Sunday morning while my father’s reading something clever and classic, sitting in a perfectly placed shaft of sunlight that arrived in the front room every sunny day on cue.

‘The light only shines on the righteous,’ he’d always chuckle, turning his face to catch the glow. He must have said it a thousand times and I believed every one.

‘How about we have a bit of fun with this?’ My mother ran her fingers through my newly cut hair and turned my head to the left and right. ‘What do you think? Blue? Green? Red? Go on, Lou-Lou, run upstairs and get your sprays. Quick, before he can say no.’ But I was never going to say no to my mother.