I shrug. ‘It’s fine. Your mum’s just looking out for me.’

He stops dead. ‘She’s your mum too.’

‘Um … yeah.’

He starts walking again and I follow. ‘It’s OK. It must be weird being dumped into a family like this and having no memory of us, or of who you really are.’

I laugh. ‘That’s an understatement.’

We walk in silence for a few seconds as Jesse frowns. ‘It’s a shame you don’t remember anything about us. I guess the difference is that I’m a few years older, but I remember you.’

I stop and look at him. ‘Do you? What do you remember?’ I ask.

He shrugs. ‘Fragments. You’d have nightmares sometimes and come into my bed. And there was a time when I pushed you off a swing and you cried. I got sent to my room, but I was livid because I didn’t mean to do it.’

I laugh. ‘Sorry.’

‘But then you brought me a stone from the garden to say sorry. It was round and smooth – a fairly ordinary stone, but you thought it was pretty. I remember your favourite dress was pink with ruffles and a big bow at the back. You wore it all the time. And then one day you were eating chocolate ice cream and you dropped it down the dress. Mum couldn’t get the stain out and you cried and cried and cried.’

‘I sound pretty annoying.’

Jesse sits down on a bench under a tree and puts the picnic bag on the ground.

‘You were. You could be. But you and I … we were also great mates. When you were taken, I looked for that stone you brought me from the garden. I couldn’t find it and I was inconsolable, apparently.’

I take his hand and squeeze it. ‘Awww. Never mind. It was just a stone.’

I let go of his hand, reach down and pick up a random stone from the path we are on. ‘Here you go, have this one. All sorted.’

He laughs, and then his expression turns serious.

‘Over the years, I’ve often thought about that stone. I’ve thought that if I couldn’t even look after a stone, there was no way I could have looked after my little sister.’

I feel uneasy at the sudden change in atmosphere. ‘Jesse, that’s silly. It wasn’t your fault I got taken,’ I say.

He nods slowly, his gaze not leaving mine. ‘I know. Kind of. And … I’m not proud of this, but that day … I was with you in the garden. We were playing. Then you annoyed me in some way and I stormed back into the house to tell on you.’ He pauses. ‘By the time I got back out, you’d gone.’