‘You’re totally brainwashed, and you don’t even know it!’ I said, angry tears coursing down my cheeks. ‘The way you’re talking about her – “she’d cut off Dad’s balls”, “she’s been a bitch to us”. You know exactly who she is, but you’re so fucking used to making excuses for her that you can’t even hear the double-speak.’ I looked at my sister’s stubbornly innocent face and, for the first time in my life, I wanted to slap it. ‘I wish it was you seeing Amber, not me. Then you’d have to grow up and face how fucking toxic our family really is!’

Sophie’s eyes flashed with fury.

‘Seeing Amber? Looking at the state she’s got you in, I can’t think of anything worse.’

‘She’s saved me!’ I wailed. ‘Sometimes things have to be burnt down so they can be rebuilt.’

Sophie shook her head.

‘That’s not you speaking, Rachel; that’s her,’ she said, waving an angry hand for the bill. ‘There’s only one person here who’s been brainwashed.’

It jolted me, the realization that my sister knew me so well that she could trace the hidden contours of my words the second they left my mouth, almost as if they were braille beneath her fingertips. The twin realization – comforting and terrifying all at once – that my connection to my family ran so much deeper than mere DNA.

‘That’s not true!’ I said. ‘That retreat healed me. It healed all of us.’

‘What, all three grand of it?’ she snapped, handing her credit card over to an understandably nervous waiter. ‘She charged three bloody grand for you to all sit around talking about your own navels in the arse-end of nowhere.’

‘How do you even know that?’ My whole family, even my beloved Sophie, were plotting against me. Spying.

‘Oh, don’t you worry – Mum’s all over it,’ she said ominously.

‘It’s none of your fucking business, but it was an incredible, healing journey that she took us on. She gave everything to us. Arthur too. We went back into our past lives, and I can tell you that Mum’s vendetta against me started way more than twenty years ago.’

Sophie angrily keyed in her pin, then grabbed for her coat from the seat next to her.

‘What are you even talking about, Rachel? If you could hear yourself! You’re not making any sense.’ She abruptly stood up.

‘Sophie, don’t go,’ I pleaded. ‘We can’t leave it like this. You’re my sister! I love you – you know how much I love you.’