‘Hello…’ I whisper as I stare back. The face, still hollow and haunted, cloaked with more memory than any child should ever have. The hair, still patchy and thin from where it’s been unknowingly pulled out in clumps during yet another nightmare. The eyes, pale and glassy apart from their rim of pink. The rest of the face mercifully covered by the cat’s, unblinking and smug with the confidence of only the overfed.

‘Peaches is tired, sweetheart. As are you. Come along now, I don’t want you to catch a chill out here.’

A laugh, true and clear, escapes me, bidden simply by the sight of her, even if it’s more painful than the sun bouncing back off the windows into my eyes. My sister, my baby sister. The half that makes me a whole, the only unbroken part left of me. The reason I put myself through it all, not just now, but from the start.189

‘This … this is for you,’ I say, fumbling with the comic I picked up at the station, cartoon-printed cellophane crackling round the plastic trinkets taped to the front. The child stares back at me, or is it the cat? I blink as I thrust it towards them. ‘I’m sorry … I’m sorry you have been sick. Maybe this will be fun for you … for you to do sometime. There’s colouring, stories, I think there might even be some stickers…’

I trail off as her new mother silently takes it from my outstretched hand. White-blonde wisps burrow further into the cat as I sway with the jasmine, suddenly so dizzy with sleeplessness and pain that I think I might pass out.

‘It’s … it’s so nice to see you,’ I choke out after another moment, more petals showering as I steady myself on the doorframe. ‘Do you, do you think it would be OK if … if I stroke Peaches? She … she looks like a really lovely cat.’

My other hand reaches out as if by itself, twitching as it lands on a bed of impossibly silky fur. I hesitate for another moment before shuffling it backward and forward, the cat’s pea-sized heartbeat thudding under my fingers. We stand, frozen in a pool of golden light as I fumble this way and that, fixated on the two sets of pink-rimmed eyes staring into mine. In another world I’d be seeing double, except I know better than my own which ones are hers. Eyes can never lie, no matter how hard they try.

‘Come on now, Katie – you can take Peaches into bed with you. And your magazine. Just this once, OK? I won’t tell if you won’t…’