‘I don’t believe this! Prue, for God’s sake!’ Angela falls silent, well, apart from the fact I can hear her positively seething down the phone. ‘Do you know why I left?’

‘Who is it on the phone?’ Damn, Dad must have taken off his headphones.

‘PPI!’ I call out. ‘Hold on a minute,’ I say to my sister. I take the phone into the bedroom and shut the door. ‘There’s no big mystery, Angela,’ I whisper. ‘You left because you were selfish, because you wanted to have fun and be free. You left me and Dad, with a clear conscience and no regrets, because the guide dogs had gone. You left us so I could be there for Dad and you didn’t have to be. So you wouldn’t have to worry about him being blind or what that meant for all of us any more. You left me at the coal face, Angela, and it was really bloody hard.’

‘That’s really not true.’

‘I think it is! And when you left, you left so completely. It’s like Dad and I didn’t exist for you any more. Like we don’t exist. You’ve closed your eyes to our lives. You just hear our voices, every three months, when you can bear to. Even when you came over for those awful visits, it was like you weren’t really with us. Whereas I could probably write a thesis on your life: how wonderful Warren and the girls are, what your backyard looks like, the kind of cakes you can buy at the idyllic little bakery down on the shore. I can picture your life, Angela; I can picture every aspect of it.’

‘You never phone me,’ says Angela quietly. ‘And I know I don’t phone very often. I have closed myself off to you and Dad, I admit it. You’re both so miserable when I phone up, although I try to be happy and chirpy. Positive. I make the effort, but you have nothing to say … You don’t sound like you particularly want to talk to me … Can I speak now? Can I tell you why I left?’

I sit down on my bed. ‘Go on then.’

There is silence. Then I hear her take a deep breath. ‘It had nothing to do with not being there for Dad,’ she says quietly. ‘It wasn’t that at all. It was because of how it was with us, once the guide dogs had gone. How everything slipped into a kind of despair.’

‘Despair? What do you know about despair?’