The grown-up boy still sees his sister regularly. They both still see their parents regularly. Since the sister moved out of her parents’ home at age eighteen, there has been no yelling. Her brother has no idea that she only keeps in touch with their parents for his sake. If asked, he would probably say, “They fought like cats and dogs when she was a teenager, but it’s all fine now.” His sister, being an expert liar, would probably say the same thing.

By the time I’ve finished reading the story, I’m calmer than I was before. Calm enough to switch back to my Yahoo account. In the subject box of my draft email to Miss Stefanowicz, I type the words “Your test failed—my son did not.” Then I sit and stare at the screen and allow myself to think, really think in detail, about my family—not Adam, Sophie and Ethan, but the one I did not choose to be a member of: Mum, Dad and Lee—for the first time in my adult life. For some reason, I’m no longer scared of the thoughts.

Silently, I ask myself the long-avoided question: why didn’t Mum protect me? Why didn’t she ever beg or calmly ask or yell at Dad to leave me alone? How could she bear to see him persecute me day after day, when I feel like smashing Miss Stefanowicz’s head against a wall repeatedly for failing Ethan on one test? Do I love Sophie and Ethan more than Mum loved me as a child? Do I care more about their suffering than she did about mine? Or was she so scared of Dad that she was too afraid to question his treatment of me?

He wouldn’t have accepted that it was persecution. In his mind, it was good parenting: “You will bring yourself into line with how I want you to be or I will make you suffer.”

What about Lee? Why did he never come hurtling out of his bedroom screaming, “Leave my sister alone?” I know Lee loved me.

Do you? What about what he did behind your back?

Lining the shelf beside the computer are a dozen or so family photographs, framed. They’re mainly of me, Adam, Sophie and Ethan, but there are two of Lee—both of him as a very young child. It’s strange, given that we’re still in contact, but I have completely blocked Lee-the-grown-man from my mind. I’ve done so all my adult life. When we get together—when I can’t avoid seeing him—I arrange it so that I don’t really see him. I don’t meet his eye, don’t look in his direction. He must notice it, but no one else would. Whenever I can, I try to get Melissa on her own, see her when Lee’s not there. I behave in this way so that I can continue to keep my innocent baby brother alive in my imagination: the one in the photographs on the shelf, with the red tricycle and the royal blue zip-up sweater.