I tried to imagine what it would feel like to have to pull your foot out of porridge to take the next step, and the next, then I tried to remember the point in my life when it had become easier to not think about my sister than to think about making things right. I leaned my weight back on my heels and got the oddest feeling of knowing exactly what I needed to say, and I realised that, despite how far I might have thought I’d come over the past few weeks, it was because before that very second it hadn’t really been true.

I felt my throat constrict and the jumble of words waiting in the wings threatened to retreat. Oh no you don’t, not today, old fruit. I swallowed deeply and imagined Dom standing behind me, holding me up like scaffolding. Telling me to say what I mean and mean what I say.

‘I’m sorry, Lou. I’m just so, so sorry.’

I’m not sure if I really did repeat it, maybe I just imagined the echo. But somehow, the word itself made it easier for me to keep going. So I kept going.

‘The things . . . What I said that day, at Dad’s funeral, I was unbelievably drunk, and it made me stupid and cruel and I . . . I missed him so much. And, shit, even as I’m saying it I know it isn’t an excuse, because I was stupid and cruel way before that. And when you’re a dumb, selfish kid and you’ve found someone to blame, it’s . . . it’s hard to give that up, because . . . because how would you make sense of it all, then?’

I’d been talking to Lou’s knees, but when I dared to look up at her, she was looking back, unblinking and dry. God, it was so easy, why had I waited? I had all the words I ever needed. Batter up for a boundary, spaghetti arms.

‘Dad would have been horrified at what I did, Lou. What I said. And I know it’s impossible to take it back, impossible for you to forget . . . to forgive me. I know that, but I just need you to know I’m sorry. I’m so bloody sorry.’

My voice cracked and finally gave up the ghost, and I rubbed my eyes hard, savouring the reassurance of the mild, gritty discomfort. When I took my hands away from my face and blinked the room back, with a swift, clumsy movement Lou slid off the edge of the bed and landed down on the floor beside me. Then my grown-up little sister’s arms were around me.

And it felt like maybe anything was possible.

Lou had changed so much but really not at all, and how had I not known that would be true?

I’m not sure how long we sat there among the offcuts of my hair, but long enough for it to sink in how close I’d come to never having this moment with the sister I’d let out of my sight. To having the first thing I heard of her in sixteen years be the worst thing. And long enough for me to understand exactly how Lou had felt when Wolfie was born. Because now I knew that keeping my sister and her daughter safe was the most important thing in the world. The last of the Mulberrys.