‘Oh, you should!’ entreats Angela. ‘Do make the effort! “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore,”’ she adds. ‘Some French person said that.’

‘Fascinating.’ Who needs Verity Holmes? I think. Who needs a sister like Angela? My prickles are up. Dad and I both have them, but we’re like cogs in a grumpy wheel: our prickles fit between each other’s and somehow the cogs keep turning. With Angela, she’s so smooth, so sunny, so bossy, I get the urge to dig my prickles right into her, but she’s so infuriatingly resistant, and probably wouldn’t even notice. Isn’t it strange how once, a very long time ago, I would have done anything for my younger sibling, but now I want to put the phone down on her and give it the V sign?

Angela started writing to Mum a couple of weeks after she left for Stockholm. We found an address for cousin Torge in Mum’s old address book and Angela bought airmail letters from the post office and she wrote long, long letters to her, giving all her news, but Mum never replied. So, after a while, I intercepted Angela’s letters, pretending to post them for her, and I replied. I got myself a Swedish pen pal from Smash Hits (I specified), I sent Sven a traveller’s cheque I bought from Thomas Cook in Islington, so he would send me a stack of ‘Stockholm’ postcards and some stamps to England and for a year or so I sent Angela a series of postcards in a better approximation of Mum’s handwriting but in a similar vein to the previous fake ones I’d engineered: ‘I miss you!’ ‘Stockholm is great!’ I couldn’t risk longer missives, nor did I have the time. By the time she was thirteen, when she got fed up of the sub-standard responses and stopped doing it, Angela had written twenty letters Mum never answered and I had sent twelve rotten postcards.

‘Can I speak to Dad, then?’ Angela asks. ‘Is he there?’

‘Of course he’s here.’

I walk over to Dad with the phone. ‘Hey … Rip Van Winkle, Angela’s on the phone,’ I say, gently touching his arm. His hair is all ruffled. He stirs and looks up at me.

‘Ah. Thanks, love.’ I hand the phone to him.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I whisper.

He smiles. ‘Are you making it?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, thanks, then.’ He grins. On the small table between our chairs, my phone starts ringing. Dad puts the house phone to his ear.

‘Hi, Dad!’ I hear Angela cry. My golden sister, sunny and light from far away. I let my phone ring to a missed call; a mobile number I don’t recognize has called me. The phone rings again. I wait a little, heart pounding, then I answer it.