‘Joe was in the wrong too, you know,’ I say lightly to her. Just trying to ease open the door to the conversation we need to have. We have circled it for so long. It’s been surprisingly easy to do so, to repress it. To make small talk, to bring Paul to see her, bearing the cookies he’s baked, to chat about the weather, the news, work.

Frannie freezes. She has gained weight in the fast, unnatural way of people recovering from something. There is fat in her cheeks and on her arms, but she looks uncomfortable with it, somehow, like an overfed baby. Her skin is pale. She doesn’t exactly look healthy, not yet. But she’s getting there.

She gets up from the bed and opens the window. I’ve been surprised by the freedoms she has, here in the hospital, under watch. It’s not as you would imagine. Frannie washes her own clothes, has visitors, open windows, gets take-out McDonald’s delivered. Browses ASOS catalogues. She isn’t restrained or overly medicated. She is just my sister, as she’s always been, closing her eyes against the open window, against the fresh spring breeze.

‘He murdered somebody,’ Frannie says, her eyes wet and wide as she turns to me. ‘As did I.’

Wood smoke drifts in on the breeze. The room quickly cools, but Frannie leaves the window open, coming to sit on the bed. ‘Do you know how it was?’ she asks me.

‘No.’

‘It was like being put into somebody else’s body.’

‘Your illness?’ I say. Blood rushes to my cheeks, not sure I’m ready for this conversation, not sure I can get it right, that I can listen and understand her, but not betray myself either.

I’ve been seeing a therapist called Stuart, who has been unpacking with me what happened with Rosie, and beyond. I’ve been experimenting with him. Working less. Observing that nothing catastrophic happens. Opening up more. Doing more things. Fun things. Letting the fuck go. We all have our own mental-health demons, I think, looking across the bed at my sister. Tonight, I am going to fight mine by determinedly having fun and observing that nothing bad happens. By telling somebody, anybody, how I really feel.

‘Imagine if suddenly, everything you liked to do, you don’t enjoy any more. You don’t want to eat. Your body aches you’re so tired,’ Frannie says tentatively. ‘That is what it’s like.’

‘I know,’ I say quietly.

‘Everything was grey. It’s frightening and bewildering. You’re snappy. You feel uncomfortable in your body. There is a constant pressing sadness.’ She pushes a hand into her stomach. New rolls of fat protrude around it. ‘Right here – you can’t ignore it. Your whole mind feels like a wound. You could cry at anything. The stupidest stuff. I kept reliving what happened with Will – when I lost my temper in a way no human should.’

‘Frannie,’ I say, my eyes filling with tears. ‘I’m so sorry you went through that.’

‘You’re thinking that if the guilt was that bad, I should have just said it was me, right? Joe says he was responsible for Evan, and me for Will. Carina called the police, said she was worried by how much Joe was calling. It was almost easy, how guilty he’d made himself look.’