‘An accident! I saw you that day, sneaking into the house with the heater. The same heater they found in our parents’ bedroom. The one they blamed for it all.’ Jo shuffled in her seat, crossing one chubby leg over the other. ‘Between shock and the agony of my hideous burns, I was unable to answer questions for weeks, poor Cassie died in the fire, and you, well, you escaped too, didn’t you? Catatonic.’ She sniffed dismissively. ‘By the time I was able to speak, they’d closed the investigation and never bothered me again.’

‘They didn’t need to,’ Allison said. ‘They found my old, scuffed leather schoolbag and all my notes about kerosene lamps and carbon monoxide poisoning. They knew it was me but, as you say, I escaped too, in a way.’ She’d been under the age of criminal responsibility at the time so couldn’t be tried for murder. It didn’t matter; she spent the next several years in one institute after the other. She hadn’t needed to be locked away to feel imprisoned… by the institutes, her memories, the name-calling, the hideous dreams of stinking smoke and wretched screams, the absolute failure to achieve the life she’d desperately searched for.

Allison looked at the photograph she held. The life she’d ended, the one she’d changed forever. ‘I’d thought if I got rid of our parents, we would get better ones. Like Monica.’ She looked up and met Jo’s gaze. ‘Remember her? The adopted girl in my class whose mother used to wait at the gate for her every day.’ She wasn’t surprised when Jo shook her head. It had been Allison’s obsession. ‘I was doing it for all of us. We’d have been happier.’

‘I was happy, Allison. You took that away.’ Jo’s eyes filled, overflowed, tears trickling down her taut skin. ‘I’ve never managed to find it again. My foster parents were kind, but to them I was a worthy cause to make them feel good about themselves, not a person to be loved.’

Allison heard the pain in the words. She’d done this too. Caused such pain. ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. I’m a monster.’

Jo used the cushion again to wipe away the tears before tossing it aside. ‘No, you’re not. You were a foolish child. All these years, I thought I was searching for you to get revenge.’ Her lips were perpetually tilted in a smile but now the smile reached her eyes. ‘But when you offered to take me shopping, I realised this is what I had been searching for. My sister.’