By the time the midwife poked her head out of the door and said my sister had arrived and I could come in, my fists were balled. Put up your dukes, I distinctly remember thinking, because I was ready to make sure this baby knew that kind of behaviour wasn’t on. Ready to meet the girl who’d turned my mother into our mother, an unfamiliar phrase that took a while before it rolled easily off my tongue.

But my mother was right. Because the minute I saw that creased-up pink doll’s face and those long bony fingers that looked just like my father’s, I fell hard. I loved my baby sister as instantly and fiercely as I’d ever loved anything in my life, and I didn’t even know why.

I used to creep into her nursery very early in the morning when my parents were still asleep and watch her tiny chest rise and fall. I’d put my hand through the bars of her cot and rest it on the covers, slowing my breathing down to match hers, and think about the most important job in the world. What it meant and how I was going to do it better than anyone had ever done it before. Absolutely, definitely, no doubt about it.

Funnily enough, whenever I’ve inconveniently dreamed about my sister over the years, which has been less than I should have but more than I wanted to, it’s mostly been as that baby or a toddler, and far less often as the older girl or teenager she became. Which I suppose isn’t really funny, and even I’m not too dumb to realise what’s going on there.

Because whenever I wake up after one of those dreams and wonder how my mother would have felt about what happened between Lou and me, I think about my most important job and I very inconveniently don’t have to wonder at all.

12

Danny

If I’d been contemplating legging it around the corner and back up to the high street (and I had), when we crossed the road and I saw George and Wolfie standing at the entrance to the flats, I realised I’d already missed my window of opportunity.

Wolfie held the door open and stood back to let us through, but when I went to follow Dom and George she moved slightly at the last minute, blocking my way. I almost walked into her and her hand flew up in the air, like she was fending me off.

‘Hey . . . hang on a sec.’ Her eyes fixed on a point just over my shoulder. ‘Look, I just wanted to say, like I said the other day, Lou’s fine. She is. But she’s still a bit— Well, she’s kind of banged up. It looks worse than it feels, though, apparently.’

Tesco van one, Lou and moped nil, then. I made a mental note to definitely not say that, wedging it in beside all the other off-limits things I wanted to avoid, like babe, and how the hell are you and where have I been all your life.