I finally clocked Lou two blocks away, legging it up to the high street, her crazy mess of brown hair flying, arms stuck out stiffly from her sides like she was getting ready to take off. She was always that way, ever since she discovered what her legs were for. Forever running towards something, and always full tilt.

In the record time it took me to sprint the distance between us, my initial relief turned to hot, shouty anger, and I put both hands on her shoulders and shook her so hard it made my teeth rattle. And when, big-eyed and sweet as you like, she told me she’d been on her way to the shops, to find me ‘a nuvva Phil Tuntfeld ball’, it was almost more than a newly minted boy-man could bear, and I squeezed her into my chest until she squealed in pain.

I never told my parents what had happened, of course, and I knew Lou would never grass me up, but even though I didn’t find out just how much trouble I would have been in for losing her for those ten bloody awful minutes, I always knew it would have been a lot.

The second time I lost Lou, it mattered more. Because that time when I looked away it wasn’t just your garden-variety, head in a drain for a few minutes type of situation. For all intents and purposes, I’d managed to virtually ignore her for the entire duration of my teenage years, and then hers. When the losing part came, it already felt like a done deal and, if I’m honest, I might have just been tidying up the loose ends.

For such a careless act, the details of that day stayed with me longer than I like to admit, though. I remember what Lou was wearing, a pale blue button-through dress that seemed out of place in a room full of black jackets, mini quiches and overfilled glasses of wine. I remember how she smelled of the perfume from a ten-year-old bottle of Miss Dior; the scent my mother had sprayed every morning, eyes closed, nose raised to the air in bliss, until the day she died. Including the day she died. And I remember exactly what I said that made me lose my sister for the second time.

I didn’t take it back. Not then, not a few hours later when I had a second chance, and not for all the years that have followed. And so she stayed lost, because I was stubborn and stupid, and because I still am both of those things and plenty more besides.

And because I meant it, that thing I’d said. So there was that, too.

10

Danny

Dom played it cool and smart, like he always does. It was a few days before he even brought the subject up, despite George barely being able to talk about anything else but Wolfie since that night.

‘Do you think Wolfie likes Marmite, Dad?’