Livi is too young to ask questions about her mother but I know the day is coming, and not that far away. What can I tell her?

Patrick’s fingerprints were on the gun as well as Anya’s, but the police think these were older.

They say that Anya shot herself, then Julia shot Patrick, then herself. Gentle, cultured Julia, with a shotgun in her hands. I can’t seem to picture this. Not that I try.

Although no one can ever know now exactly what happened, it probably played out like this:

I picture her walking to the front door and using her key to go into the house she grew up in. Maybe Julia was napping, the chemo having taken a lot out of her that day.

Maybe Patrick said something like, ‘What’s up, sweetie?’ but she ignored him and went to where he kept the shotgun. She knew how to load it because Patrick had shown her once.

I think she wanted to be with them, when she did it. It had to be there. And they wouldn’t be able to live without her.

It was all or nothing, when you were a Ryland. Julia knew, I think, more than I ever understood, what Anya was capable of. I think she was trying to warn me that day in her study, when she suggested I let her know if Anya’s behaviour ever ‘worried’ me. At the time, I thought it was concern about Anya’s well-being.

But maybe it was fear of what Anya might do.

Patrick, it turned out afterwards, was under investigation for defrauding investors in his company. Julia was much sicker than any of us had known.

I think about the picture they had on top of their piano sometimes, taken on a French holiday when Anya was a child. They are sitting at a sunlit table outside a café, the table crowded with baskets of food. Patrick has a tall glass of beer in front of him, Julia a glass of red. Anya is holding up a glass of Coke and making a silly face at the camera.

The perfect middle-class family on holiday.

They would always be together now.

A wave of grief hits me, as it often does, and I take deep breaths. One day at a time. That’s what my counsellor says. I may never get over this, but a time will come when I can live with it.

I get angry at Anya sometimes. I was so very grateful that she chose me, you see. I thought she was better than me inside. But I don’t know whether she would have been able to change.

I still miss her, despite everything she did. But when I try and imagine a different outcome – knowing she had killed two people – I don’t think we could have survived that.