‘But . . . you . . . you . . .’ I say, waiting for one of them to change into someone else because it just doesn’t make sense for these two people who have been paying me to listen to their life stories to be here together. ‘What the hell is going on here?’ I say. ‘How do you even know each other?’

‘She’s my wife,’ says Michael bluntly.

‘Anna’s your wife?’ I gasp.

I think of all the stories he’d told me about the violence he’d endured and can’t even begin to compute that he was talking about the woman in front of me; the woman I’ve known for the past two months.

‘But how? H-how can that be?’ I stutter. ‘You told me your wife beat you. That she abused and humiliated you. That she . . . she . . .’ I can’t list everything he’s accused her of; there are too many to mention.

‘She did all of that,’ he exclaims. ‘She’s still doing it.’

‘He told you I was abusing him?’ asks Anna incredulously.

I shake my head, unable to make any sense of what either of them are saying. I’d believed them both wholly and unequivocally when they were sitting on my couch, each telling me their own story. Why wouldn’t I, because why would they be making it up? But now, I have no idea who was telling the truth.

‘You have proof in front of you that I’ve been telling the truth. I’ve been kept here for five days!’

‘But how . . . I mean, how can this even be possible?’ I turn to look at the woman who just yesterday was going to end it all. The same woman, I suddenly realize, who was screaming down the phone at me this morning, accusing me of having an affair with her husband.

‘So you’re Vanessa?’

She looks at me; the eyes that had appeared to be dead with grief are now burning with a ferocious fire. Her mouth, with which only words of shame and self-reproach had been uttered, is pulled tight. She looks nothing like the woman I’ve come to know as Anna.

In the madness of the moment, I find myself searching her face for any resemblance to the little girl I haven’t seen for twenty-six years. Could Jennifer be in there? Has she been in there all this time without me realizing it?

My shredded brain runs over every conversation we’ve had, desperately looking for clues that she’s the sister I left behind. Does she have my mother’s eyes? Or the ravaged features of her drug-taking past? It seems she certainly has my father’s psychotic gene.