Mum would sit on the edge of my bed and brush my hair one hundred times before doing the same for Marie. She treated us exactly the same. I can’t quite remember whether Marie and I insisted our clothes, our shoes be identical, or whether our parents, delighted with having twins, tried to mould us both into the same person. We didn’t mind though, me and Marie were closer to each other than anyone else. Carly’s relationship with Mum was different. There were evenings when Dad was out and Marie and I were in bed when we’d creep downstairs to beg for a glass of water, another story, a cuddle, to find Mum and Carly nestled together on the sofa in front of the TV, fingers dipping chicken nuggets into thick ketchup.

Mum loved us all – of that I’ve no doubt – but she loved Dad the most of all. Her eyes shone whenever he walked into a room. They always kissed each other hello and goodbye and held hands when we strolled around the park with Bruno. Often I wonder what life would have been like if it wasn’t for that single, horrifying event that changed the shape of our future. Would we be one of those families who ate Sunday lunch together each week? My parents kneeling on the floor playing with grandchildren in the way they hadn’t always had time to play with us?

Would we be parts of a whole rather than fragmented pieces of something that will never again fit together?

In the days, the weeks, the months that followed our abduction, Mum and Dad veered between sadness and anger. Tears and rage. Once I’d wandered into the kitchen to find Mum sobbing, ‘I’m their mum. I should have protected them, I’ve let them down,’ while Dad hissed, ‘And you think I’ve let them down too? Just say it.’

They kept us cooped up. Not wanting us to even play in the garden alone. I’m not sure whether they were scared we’d be taken again or scared we’d be interrogated by one of the many reporters who still trailed after us wherever we went. Probably both.

My parents’ glittering life crumbled. Our childhood was unpicked in the tabloids. How had we been raised? Why had Carly been left alone to feed and take care of her two young sisters? How often did my parents go out? It was a carousel of blame and scrutiny and it makes me dizzy just thinking about it now. How would I feel if my relationship with Archie was dissected? The entire country seemed to blame my mum until she became a shell of the parent she had been. Old photos of her laughing would appear in the paper captioned, Face of loving mother? She began to leave us to our own devices – mine and Marie’s hair becoming matted and tangled, as though she didn’t trust herself to do things properly. That’s what I like to think, anyway, that it wasn’t that she didn’t care. She just didn’t know how to be a mum any more when she’d failed so spectacularly in the eyes of the world. She and Dad divorced. She began to drink. We’d find vodka bottles hidden everywhere. In the laundry basket. The freezer. The cupboard under the stairs. It’s probably where Marie gets it from.