Who had pulled that trigger?

Veronica. Veronica.

Of course it was Veronica. She’d pulled Eliza away from her that summer, and then she’d taken her forever.

Veronica.

For twenty-odd years she’d been the source of all Sarah’s nervousness and fear and self-loathing. The reason she’d declined a university sports trip, unable then to summon the courage to fly. The reason she’d had to rush out of an interview after a revolving door sent her into panic. The reason for nights and nights of insomnia in the dark. And Eliza. The reason she had lost Eliza. Her sister. Her always.

And Veronica didn’t even seem to remember.

That had been the thing about her from the beginning, the thing that Sarah most hated and envied: the girl was oblivious. Beautiful naturally. Confident without trying. Wealthy for generations. And more than anything, she was free, bold, wild. That was what captivated people, that was what had hypnotised Sarah, that was what sometimes still, she wished she could be, rid of the long lists of morals embedded within her, the responsibilities of an immigrant family, a wandering people, parents who instilled these things. What would it be like, she wondered, to be free to do something deliberately bad, or not even bad, but foolish, unguarded, careless? What would it be like for the world to come so easily, to be as oblivious as her friend?

Keeping her eyes shut tight inside the machine, Sarah asked her mind to imagine it. But she couldn’t, because even at university, even in that great wildness of youth, Sarah had remained ‘true to herself’. She had drunk only in moderation. She had never woken up in a surprising bedroom. She simply was unable to be that girl who could get up in front of other people to sing or dance with abandon, who didn’t care. Only once, it had happened. Just once: at her parents’ house that summer, under the blanket of night, and the sticky wood of the pool house, and the indifference of her hero sister. Watchful margins had somehow rubbed away, and awakened things. She had been emboldened, by Veronica, loved by her, illuminated by her gaze.

Until all light disappeared in the tiny room at the back of the pool house.

Sarah opened her eyes, then seeing the proximity of the machine, snapped them quickly shut again in a surge of panic – familiar and debilitating.

How dare Veronica do this to her? And to Eliza. And not even deign to remember it. How dare she invite them to dinner and then undermine her, manipulate her, visit David. How dare she make trouble now for Amelia. Suggesting there was something wrong with her. Hold that over them. And why did Sarah put up with it? Why had Sarah never called her to account? Why had she let it go back then? Why hadn’t she told her parents? Why had she ‘risen above it’ and ‘walked away’ and not done something to take revenge?