Jess nodded slowly. She didn’t believe her, of course. Her sister could see through her. ‘Do you remember when you were little, you wanted to be a pilot?’ Jess asked.

‘Yes! And then I went on my first flight and threw up.’

‘I wouldn’t get in a plane you were flying,’ Jess laughed.

‘I don’t blame you. And you wanted—’ Mia stopped suddenly, cursing herself that she could be so stupid.

‘It’s okay, you can say it.’

Jess’s eyes were drawn and heavy and didn’t mask the sadness that hid behind them. There were too many dark memories and shadows cast over their lives to give either of them much to be happy about when they were together. Even when they were having a laugh, there would always be a reminder.

Sometimes when she saw her sister like this, remembering a time before, Mia’s heart fractured into even more pieces. She wanted to hold Jess in her arms and take away everything that had made her into this.

There were other times when she wanted to scream at Jess that she could do something about it. That she didn’t need to live in such misery; she could pull herself out of the dark depths to which she’d descended.

Mia knew that wasn’t wholly fair, and often asked herself what she would have done? If what had happened to Jess had happened to her? Of course she would never know for sure, when she hadn’t had everything taken away from her like Jess had.

‘I want you to say it,’ Jess was urging her now, like it was some kind of challenge.

‘You wanted to be a runner,’ Mia replied.

Jess was always running. Almost as soon as she was walking, her mum used to joke that she was trying to get everywhere quicker. At fifteen, she was school sports captain and ran cross-country for Hampshire. In her teens she’d be up every morning before Mia had even opened her eyes and would be out of the house, in her trainers, pounding the pavements and the country lanes.

In those days no one used to worry about kids running on their own – down practically deserted pathways, alongside rivers, around the streets – before the sun had even come up. Her mum hadn’t blinked an eyelid that Jess wasn’t in her bed when she got up in the morning; she just used to hope she’d be home before the school bus left.

She always was. Because that was Jess – dedicated to her schoolwork too. She was promising in every way imaginable; all her reports foretold that she could achieve anything she put her mind to.