As I walked over to my shed, I heard a loud rustling in the hedge and caught a flash of blue shirt and a stifled curse as a pair of wood pigeons flapped off into the sky. At least there were some things I could rely on not to change.

God bless you, Ray.

My mother died when I was the best and worst of ages. Thirteen, when the world’s laid out at the bottom of your size nines and you’re starting to grow the things that make you a man – hair, heart, underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex. But it’s also a time when nobody, least of all you, really knows who you’re on the cusp of being, so nobody, especially not you, knows how to navigate the wreckage that’s strewn around your thirteen-year-old life.

After Mum died, my father was so focused on Lou that he probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t bothered with the pretence of getting up, putting on my school uniform and heading out of the door with my school bag full of nothing every day. Quite often I didn’t, and I don’t think he did. Because I was the best and worst of ages, and my sister was the eight-year-old girl who’d been in the car when our mother drove off the edge of the M25 in the rain. The miracle who’d been crowbarred out of a fatal smash without the proverbial scratch, on a special girls’ day out to Brighton to visit the only shop this side of Penzance that stocked a particular style of rose-pink, size-three ballet shoes.

Because thirteen is the best and worst of ages for a boy, nobody really knows what you’re thinking, either. Not when you’re watching TV or eating your dinner. Not when you’re lying up in your room with the door locked, drinking your first can of lager bought for you by your mate’s big brother. And not when you walk out of the door with an empty school bag over your shoulder.

Nobody knows the thing you’ve been repeating over and over in your head, every spare minute of every day for a month, because you need it to be true. That you love her, that eight-year-old girl. You love her. Because you’ve got the most important job in the world and anything else is unfathomable, illogical, impossible.

Because she’s your sister.

And so, you couldn’t blame her for your mother’s death.

Except that you could. Because you did.

18

Danny

Living in a garden shed means I’m used to some pretty random noises. If I hear a rustling or scurrying or a faint tapping outside the window in the early hours, my worst guess is an axe murderer, but my best is usually a squirrel. Most of the time I’m able to wish my (hopefully) furry, not axe-wielding visitor well and drop straight back off to sleep.

So, when I was disturbed out of a very satisfying dream that involved Ray stranded in the high branches of a tree being held to account by a jury of wood pigeons, I was relaxed enough about whatever had woken me to wonder what might have happened next. I lay there leisurely and conjured a scenario of the entire neighbourhood witnessing me carry out a heroic rescue, while Ray showered me with his undying gratitude and apologies for having ever doubted my character.