So long ago. It felt like the memory belonged to someone else’s life. To a little girl who would sit on her parents’ bed, sketchbook open on her lap, watching her mother seated at her dressing table in a gown made from pale blue silk. A child who was mesmerized by the sight of her mother putting on her makeup, getting herself ready for a night at the opera.

Emily shook her head as she ripped out the sheet from her sketchbook, scrunched it tighter and tighter, then tossed it aside.

Phoebe watched without saying a word. She must have seen what it was Emily had drawn. The lines that seeped from the circles, twisted and turned themselves into a picture Emily had kept locked away. Surely she must wonder why Emily decided to destroy the image of a woman, seated by a mirror, brushing her hair?

“It must be hard.” Phoebe picked up the discarded piece of paper, put it back down again. “To be the only one left.”

You have no idea, Emily thought as she smoothed out a fresh page.

“Sometimes pain is necessary, to enable you to recognize when you finally feel better.” Phoebe took a long, slow breath, the exhale coming out as a judder. “I used to hurt myself.”

Emily looked up. Phoebe was staring out of the window, but Emily could see in the reflection that she was trying not to cry.

“We’re all told that we should be the best at something, or at least extraordinary in some way.” Phoebe fiddled with the cuffs of her shirt and Emily noticed how her nails were bitten down to the pads of her fingers.

“No one’s the best.”

“I read somewhere that you can get addicted to pain. Or, rather, the feeling you get when the pain goes away.”

“I wish I knew what it felt like for the pain to go away.”

Phoebe offered her a faint smile. “I learnt to forgive myself. To focus on the here and now, instead of always looking to the future.”

Her words made Emily realize that she had only allowed herself to live in the present because she was afraid of everything else. Too scared to look back, too uncertain to think about what comes next.

“How’s that working out for you?” Emily asked.

Phoebe gave a small smile. “Not great, to be honest. I have absolutely no idea what it is I want to do.”

“Join the club.”

“What about your drawings, your grandmother’s stories?”

“They’re her stories, not mine.”

“When you were younger, what did you want to grow up and be?”

“An astronaut,” Emily said without stopping to think.

Phoebe laughed. “Seriously?”

“Also a ballerina, a showjumper, and a magician.”

“A magician?”

“I wanted a pet rabbit.” But her mother had said no, due to the foxes that lived at the bottom of the garden. She told Emily the poor creature would either get eaten or die of a heart attack while the foxes prowled around outside its hutch.