There was a shift in the air as the door swung open. She felt Bee cross the room and stand behind her, looking at the same view, at Simon. She leant in closer. Her breath was stale, her hip nudged Loo, one arm draping around her shoulders and her weight settling on her, skin on skin, edging Loo off balance. It was too much, too hot; besides, they never hugged. Loo tried to pull away and felt an answering pressure across her shoulders as her sister refused to budge, her fingers digging into the soft skin at the top of Loo’s arm.

‘I told you not to move.’ Loo jumped back from the window, startled. Bee was standing by the door, well out of reach, her mother’s pin cushion in one hand, needle, thread and scissors in the other. Loo felt dizzy, the room seemed to shimmer briefly, then everything came back into focus, sharp, solid. Bee was giving her a funny look.

‘You’re bloody useless, you are.’ Bee dragged her in front of the mirror again. She grabbed the waistband of the skirt and pinched it, pulling it tight, pinning it into place before she knelt and began to work on the hem. ‘You can sew it yourself, though,’ she said. ‘You needn’t think I’m going to do it.’ She worked quickly, so quickly Loo was sure the hem would turn out lopsided.

‘Bee?’

‘What?’

‘Will Joe come back soon?’

Joe, not Dad. Cathy, not Mum. Loo wasn’t sure when they’d started using their parents’ proper names, or even whose idea it had been in the first place, but they all did it now, except for Anto, who was too little to say anything.

Bee stopped what she was doing and looked up. She didn’t look angry, exactly, but still Loo wished she hadn’t said anything. ‘Suppose so,’ she said, turning her attention back to the hem. She sounded as if she didn’t care at all, but it was hard to tell. Bee was such a bloody liar, that’s what Joe used to say whenever he caught her out. He thought it was funny, most of the time, and Loo had often wondered if she did it for that exact reason, to make him laugh.

‘Bee—’

‘Shut up, Loo.’

There was no point in asking anything else.

‘There,’ Bee said as she got to her feet. ‘That’s better.’

Bee’s outfit didn’t need altering. Her skirt didn’t sag down onto the floor, and the camisole she wore was a little bit too tight, if anything. As if the girl they once belonged to fitted between the two of them, between Bee and Loo.

She should say something, about the window, about the . . .