My stomach contracts in a violent retch and I spit the saliva that’s flooded into my mouth onto the concrete between my feet, hoping Dad’s too preoccupied with Toby to notice what’s happening. I glance down at him, relieved to see his back is turned and he’s swaying gently from side to side. He’s probably singing to him, but I can’t hear him from all the way up here. All I can hear is a strange whooshing noise that isn’t, as I first thought, the wind whistling through the trees, but the sound of my own blood magnified in my ears.

I sink to my knees, hot tears coursing down my cheeks, my nose all stuffy and blocked, as I finally realize what my subconscious has been trying to tell me all these years. I didn’t push Alice. We weren’t fighting at all. We’d been arguing, yes. A childish spat that spiraled out of control.

Maybe it was the stress of the quarrel, but I must have stumbled onto the tracks in those surreal few minutes before a seizure, that briefest of periods when mind and body separate, when consciousness tilts and fades. Whatever we’d been screaming at each other up to that point is irrelevant. It always has been. It was fear in her eyes when we were struggling. But she wasn’t frightened of me like I’ve always suspected; she was frightened for me.

I wasn’t fighting her on the track. I was having my seizure on the track. Alice was trying to save me. She always looked out for me, made sure I was safe. Somehow or other, she found the strength to push me onto the ballast. And that’s where I finally came to.

But it was too late for Alice.

All my life I’ve wanted a sister. Was that why the two of us became such instant friends? Was there an invisible thread between us, binding us together from the start? Was that why our friendship seemed so natural, so right? All the laughter we shared. All the fun. If only I hadn’t seen that flicker of a smile on her lips. If only she hadn’t hinted at having a secret, we might never have started arguing in the first place. But once again, I let my stupid jealousy get the better of me and started yelling at her. Saying horrible, mean things.

Now, of course, I know exactly what she was smiling about. Catherine had broken her thirteen-year silence and told Alice what she knew. Told her we were sisters. There was me thinking that Alice was being all mysterious about Dave Farley and working myself up into a jealous fury, when all the time she’d been trying to find the right way of telling me we were related.

Alice was excited. Happy. All she wanted to do was share the news.

Alice, my best friend.