In the morning, she’d take the towel away. Her parents would have died peacefully in their sleep. And Allison and her siblings would get the childhood they deserved.

* * *

Allison shook the thoughts away. They didn’t go far, they never did, always ready to ooze out to haunt her when she least expected it, and every single time she thought she was putting her past firmly behind her.

Jo leaned back against the windowsill and folded her arms. ‘You still have no idea who I am, do you?’

She could be any one of so many people Allison had dealt with at the time. Police constables, social workers, doctors, health professionals whose function she never knew.

‘No.’ She shrugged. ‘There were so many people. After a while, I stopped trying to remember who was who.’ It was a lie. Afterwards, when it was over and the monster had retreated, she’d been catatonic for weeks. The following years were spent in a succession of institutions before eventually she was housed in a series of foster homes that never, ever, came close to the dream she’d longed for.

She was weary of games. ‘Who are you?’

Jo crossed and took her seat on the sofa beside Allison. ‘Before the scars changed me, my name was Beth.’

82

Beth? Allison stared at Jo blankly. The years slipped away and Allison was pulled back to 1990, staring across the smoky landing to where her younger sister stood in the doorway, calling for her. Beth? What Jo was inferring was impossible. Beth was dead.

‘You’re thinking I’m too old, aren’t you?’ Jo huffed a laugh. ‘You have to make allowances for the burns, for the years of pain, the agonising, searing anguish of skin grafts, the rounds of plastic surgery. I’m twenty-seven.’

‘It’s a lie.’ Allison’s face creased in anger. ‘Beth’s dead. I looked for her when I was old enough. They said she’d been adopted by a family who moved to Canada. They hadn’t followed up on her once she’d left their jurisdiction, but they did have contact details and I rang…’

* * *

Allison remembered the call. She’d been nineteen, had been begging the social workers for years to allow her to contact her sister and they’d finally agreed.

She’d held her breath as the phone rang and when it was answered, by a woman with a surprisingly strong Yorkshire accent, she asked to speak to Beth.

‘Who’s speaking, please?’

‘It’s Allison.’ The two words were released on a breath. ‘Her sister.’ She’d expected a word of surprise; instead, there was a deadly silence.

‘I’m terribly sorry. I thought you’d have been told. Beth passed away about a year ago. A car accident. It was instant.’

* * *