I haven’t smoked since I was sixteen but I can taste it. I want to. I want to stand in the kitchen of my flat at two in the morning smoking with my sister, pretend it was something we did together even though I never used to because I was the good girl.

“Couldn’t you sleep?” she asks, and I shake my head, frowning.

This dream is too real. Are you awake or asleep? my mind whispers. Of course I’m asleep. How could Bella be here otherwise? All my dreams of Bella since the accident…they’ve always been about after, nightmares: I’ve never dreamed her alive, never talked to her. The longing to hold her again, not let her go, is fierce, a physical pang.

“Remember when we were kids?” she says, stubbing her cigarette out in a plant pot. I don’t say anything—the plant’s fake anyway. I don’t like fake plants, don’t see the point, but I inherited it with the flat. Here are your keys and a fake plant to welcome you. Like half of my day-to-day life, it’s just there, existing unseen in the corner of my eye until now.

“Remember how you could never sleep until I came home?”

“I used to worry,” I say. “I liked to stay awake until I heard you come in. Until I knew you were safe.” I wipe a tear off my cheek as she sighs.

“Dad would go off to bed, trusting everything would be fine, but I’d stay awake and watch the minutes ticking away and wait. I’d imagine so many awful things happening as every minute past midnight ticked away.”

“You always were an old woman for worrying,” she says.

“I was right to worry, though, wasn’t I?” I feel the heat rising in my cheeks. Funny, all these years I’d never realized how angry I am. I’m angry at how irresponsible she was.

“Are you still waiting?” she asks, and I frown.

“What do you mean?”

She leans in. I can smell cigarette smoke in her hair. I can hear her breathing, her breath overlapping mine. “Is that why you can’t sleep now?”

I exhale, release it and reach out a hand, wishing I could touch her. It’s Dad’s phone call doing this. Calling me home. Making me remember.

I don’t want to remember.