Everything from the night of the wedding is coated in a layer of fog. I waited, afterward, for my memory to come back. A trickle of little things did come back—a flash of entering the woods after Bella, the feel of rain on my head as the storm broke. As I healed from my injuries, as I watched Bella being buried, as we cleared her room, I waited, expecting the trickle to become a flood. The police stopped asking questions after the inquest declared her death an accident, but still I waited.

The bits I do remember are things I didn’t want Dad to know. I remember drinking champagne and being drunk almost to the point of passing out. I remember someone half-carrying me upstairs. But who? Max? Dad? God—Jack or Sean? And shouting—Bella and me, and someone else. So much shouting, barely heard above the storm. But the fog is like a curtain I can’t pull aside.

Sophie leans back. “Shit,” she says again.

“Yes. It was. Totally shit. I’ve never…I was sixteen. Everyone was saying it was this tragic accident, but I refused to accept it. I was convinced something terrible had happened, but I couldn’t remember. I was plagued by the most awful nightmares afterward—my sister rising from the grave, stalking me through the woods like some zombie horror show. I couldn’t wait to get away—from the house, from the woods. From everyone that reminded me of her.”

“Christ, Tess, that’s understandable, but…”

“I miss her,” I say, pressing my hand against my rib cage where the ache of regret is almost physical. “I miss her so much, but I’ve refused to let myself think about her. But she keeps appearing in my dreams and then last night—it wasn’t one of the nightmares—Bella was here, in this flat, and it was so real.”

There are tears in my eyes and I can see Sophie blinking back tears of her own.