She put the orca on top of the duvet and drew her finger along one of the raised cotton ridges made by Matty’s body. ‘You’re my sister.’

‘No, I’m not.’

Her face coloured with alarm. ‘Brother?’

‘No.’ Matty moved the orca off. ‘I’m not.’

Sheanna kept tracing lines on the duvet, before slowly turning and walking out of the room.

Rain on the window. A tiny, persistent tapping. The tapping of the radiator, in sympathy. Matty scratched a rib, and another, and realised that the eczema was back in force again.

She came running back in after a couple of minutes. ‘Sibling.’ She looked triumphant. ‘I didn’t know I had one, and now I do and it’s like magic. Why didn’t you tell me?’

The slightest softening. ‘Because I didn’t know.’

‘You didn’t know, either?’

It was hard to look at her. ‘No.’

‘I’m to tell you that there’s breakfast downstairs. I’m having eggy bread with maple syrup.’ She did a little skipping hop out of the room.

Matty had always been alone. One. It wasn’t possible.

The three of them were sitting at the breakfast bar in the kitchen by the time Matty came down, all talking at once. A teapot and a cafetière and toast and eggs. Happy families.

Joe slowly got off his stool. He was in pyjama bottoms and a jumper. ‘Been keeping it warm for you.’ A hesitant smile. There were the same bruised shadows under his eyes. ‘Did you sleep OK? Do you want coffee, or tea, or …?’

‘Let Matty just sit down, Joe,’ said Franklin, who had his big forearms over the counter, a paper open, as if everything was perfectly normal.

‘I’m doing it. I’m being mother,’ Sheanna said, with deliberate enunciation, kneeling on her stool and leaning over to reach the handle of the teapot. ‘Because I am the only girl in the house,’ she said, in an only slightly quieter stage whisper.

There was an amused, awkward silence. A deep awareness of Joe’s gaze, tentatively curious.

Franklin watched Sheanna pour the tea, holding her elbow to help. ‘Careful, sugarpop.’

‘I can do it,’ she said, sounding affronted as she shrugged him off, biting her lip in concentration and setting the teapot down again. ‘You went in.’ She looked at Matty.

The two men looked between them both, not comprehending.

A tiny nod, and a tinier answer. ‘Yeah.’

‘Matty’s a mad swimmer. She – he – Matty goes in freezing cold ice water, like a polar bear, just for fun. Like a mermaid. A modern mermaid.’

Joe was looking at Matty. ‘Do you, now.’

Everyone was staring. Franklin seemed to sense the discomfort, and demonstratively turned the page of his paper to show Sheanna a picture of a robin shaking its feathers out.