‘Cait, you know I—’

‘I know.’ I cut him off. I had to keep him from saying something he might regret, something he didn’t mean.

‘Night, Caitlin.’ He kissed me, but it felt wrong. Empty.

I tried to look at him, but I couldn’t. ‘Night,’ I said to the ground.

He didn’t move, so I did. I turned and walked away, not letting myself turn back, not even for a second.

Careful.

I walked for a long time, felt Tom’s arms around me and his breath on my forehead and saw that look on his face. Heard his voice telling me it was okay, telling me we could fix it. Wishing we could.

Jenny wasn’t careful. She was young when she had Lina. The pregnancy was an accident but Jenny was madly in love and she thought they could make a go of it. So she married Lina’s dad and they tried. She tried. She loved him so much. He was different then. Nicer. They were happy, for a while.

She told me that once, years later. Afterwards. Lina and I had fallen asleep watching TV and I’d woken up to go home and found Jenny sitting in the kitchen with a glass of wine, a pack of cigarettes next to her, not even bothering to hide them like she usually did. Maybe she was bad again then. I didn’t know. I didn’t know if Lina knew either. I’d sat with her for a while, not wanting to leave her alone. She never slept very much.

It’s so quiet here, she’d said, staring out the window at the black sky, like she was waiting for something. So bloody quiet. It drives me crazy.

You and Mum, honestly.

I walked and walked. Fast. Until it hurt my chest and I had to gasp for breath and when I smoked cigarettes they stabbed and bit at my lungs. Walked until I was hot, sweaty, my face damp; until the cold sliced at my skin like broken glass, like glitter in fairy floss. Walked until I was lost and there were fewer people and the buildings weren’t so tall, and there wasn’t so far to fall.

She said it all the time.

You and Mum.

That we were switched at birth, that we were the same, Jenny and I.

So bloody quiet.

She didn’t know how I could sleep with all the noise.

I didn’t sleep. I listened. I waited.

New York, I imagined, was never quiet. On TV it was never quiet. Even in pictures, even on postcards, it roared and beeped and flashed and wailed and clanged. It shone, but mostly it roared.