She held it between her forefinger and thumb and raised it to eye level. ‘Untouched,’ she observed.

‘I don’t want his pills, Mother. I don’t need them.’

‘These pills are to help you.’

‘These pills, Mother, are to sedate me. I can’t be any trouble if I’m not capable of functioning.’

‘They are to help you cope.’

‘I won’t take them. I simply won’t. I don’t want to be numb. I want to feel – I need to feel.’

‘Sometimes we feel too much.’

‘That is better than feeling nothing at all! You can’t just wave a magic wand and make me forget everything – make me better. You heard Mayhew. I might never recover.’

‘Oh!’ Mother threw up her hands in disgust. ‘Listening at doors now are we, Stella? Is that what you have been reduced to?’

‘With the two of you conspiring to put me away, I will indeed listen at doors. At least then I know what you’re planning.’

‘Oh, Stella.’ She collapsed on the end of my bed, her shoulders sagging as the fight deserted her. She tapped the bottle, the pills rattling against the glass like a maraca. ‘I don’t want you to be “put away”, Stella, but neither do I want to lose you. I’ve already buried Lydia, I cannot bear to give up another child.’ Her face creased with pain, and she suddenly looked so aged and worn that I was rather shocked. It was like coming across an old doll, fondly remembered as young and beautiful, but finding it had become ragged and chipped from too much play. Pain numbed her eyes as she looked at me. ‘I do understand what you are going through. I know you think I don’t. But I do know loss, Stella, I know the pain it brings.’

Of course, she knew loss, I could never deny that, though I resented her belief that Lydia’s death affected her most of all. She would tearfully declare that she had lost a part of herself, whereas, in her view at least, Madeleine and I had only lost a companion. But Lydia was so much more than that. She was our constant shadow, our extra limb, she was our clown when we were in the doldrums and our willing scapegoat whenever were in trouble, always confident her angelic sweetness would deffuse our parents’ anger. She was our sister and if not a physical part of ourselves, she was a precious, irreplaceable feature of our very existence and even now we carried her in our hearts, always.