I turned to him. ‘Jack…sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.’

‘Don’t be silly, darlin’…I just wish I could take this from you, and I can’t.’

‘You’re here,’ I said. ‘You’re here and it makes a difference…I can’t wait till this afternoon, Jack. Fleur and I have waited so many years…I need to see for myself that Saffie is really dead.’

The small skeleton was almost intact. They had laid the bones of my sister as she had been found, curled for sleep. The Indian pathologist told us they had taken great care with her. They had been sure that the bones fitted the profile of a small European girl aged about five years, who must have died about twenty-five or so years ago, and the DNA had confirmed it.

The room was cool and Fleur’s hand in mine was icy but did not shake. We could not take our eyes from the tiny skull, turned sideways still. They had asked us if it was a good idea to see her. They said: Why not remember her as she was, alive and happy? The living child my mother and I carried around with us every day of our lives. But when there has been no body, there has been no death that you can really believe in. At first you carry hope, then when that dies you think of her somewhere else, but alive. Kidnapped and living with strangers. At least I did. I made up another life for Saffie for years and years. I thought of her with people who loved her, where happiness was possible. And then as I grew up and that slid from me I prayed that she had not had time to be too frightened. I hoped only that death had been quick and that she had not been aware it was coming.

I needed to see concrete evidence that I had been a twin. That once, long ago, I had another part of me that was inseparable, for sometimes it seemed only a lovely dream that I conjured from loneliness. In that terrible, swift and sudden end to Saffie’s life a part of me died too.

I moved forward to peer into the hollow eyes that once had eyes like mine and I bent to my own skull and felt the rustle of unease ripple round a room that was so silent it felt surreal.

We were one, Saffie. We were one and the same, you and I.

Lying safe in Fleur’s womb we lay curled together, submerged and sealed in warm, protective water. We could have been fraternal twins, but we were one egg which split in two. Conceived together; just a speck of a billion sperm, random eggs that swam upwards making us identical.

Even when you died I thought we could be one again. I made myself believe that by sheer will I could conjure you to me. I put on your blue cotton pyjamas. I pulled my hair up in that old blue band of yours, just like you used to do.