ouisa didn’t come out of her room for a whole thirty-six hours after she got back from her holiday. She arrived back from the airport late evening on the Sunday, pale as a ghost under her suntan – and we couldn’t work that out for a start, as she had definitely said she’d see us first thing Monday morning. I just need to sleep, she had said, then shut herself in her room and gone straight to bed. We had thought it a little odd, but what did we know? Lou has been peculiar since birth, after all.

Mum had taken up a mug of tea in the morning, and Lou had not stirred. By supper, Mum had become worried and shaken her, checking she was alive. (She can be a bit melodramatic, Mum – although, to be fair, she had made fish pie and she probably just wanted to make sure Lou wasn’t going to miss it.) But Lou wouldn’t eat, and she wouldn’t talk and she wouldn’t come downstairs. I just want to stay here for a bit, Mum, she said, into her pillow. Finally, Mum left her alone.

‘She’s not herself,’ said Mum. ‘Do you think it’s some kind of delayed reaction to the thing with Patrick?’

‘She couldn’t give a stuff about Patrick,’ Dad said. ‘I told her he rang to tell us he came 157th in the Viking thing, and she couldn’t have looked less interested.’ He sipped his tea. ‘Mind you, to be fair on her, even I found it pretty hard to get excited about 157th.’

‘Do you think she’s ill? She’s awful pale under that tan. And all that sleeping. It’s just not like her. She might have some terrible tropical disease.’

‘She’s just jet-lagged,’ I said. I said it with some authority, knowing that Mum and Dad tended to treat me as an expert on all sorts of matters that none of us really knew anything about.

‘Jet lag! Well, if that’s what long-haul travel does to you, I think I’ll stick with Tenby. What do you think, Josie, love?’

‘I don’t know … who would have thought a holiday could make you look so ill?’ Mum shook her head.

I went upstairs after supper. I didn’t knock. (It was still, strictly speaking, my room, after all.) The air was thick and stale, and I pulled the blind up and opened a window, so that Lou turned groggily from under the duvet, shielding her eyes from the light, dust motes swirling around her.

‘You going to tell me what happened?’ I put a mug of tea on the bedside table.

She blinked at me.

‘Mum thinks you’ve got Ebola virus. She’s busy warning all the neighbours who have booked on to the Bingo Club trip to PortAventura.’

She didn’t say anything.

‘Lou?’

‘I quit,’ she said, quietly.

‘Why?’

‘Why do you think?’ She pushed herself upright, and reached clumsily for the mug, taking a long sip of tea.

For someone who had just spent almost two weeks in Mauritius, she looked bloody awful. Her eyes were tiny and red-rimmed, and her skin, without the tan, would have been even blotchier. Her hair stuck up on one side. She looked like she’d been awake for several years. But most of all she looked sad. I had never seen my sister look so sad.

‘You think he’s really going to go through with it?’

She nodded. Then she swallowed, hard.

‘Shit. Oh, Lou. I’m really sorry.’

I motioned to her to shove over, and I climbed into bed beside her. She took another sip of her tea, and then leant her head on my shoulder. She was wearing my T-shirt. I didn’t say anything about it. That was how bad I felt for her.

‘What do I do, Treen?’

Her voice was small, like Thomas’s, when he hurts himself and is trying to be really brave. Outside we could hear next door’s dog running up and down alongside the garden fence, chasing the neighbourhood cats. Every now and then we could hear a burst of manic barking; its head would be popping up over the top right now, its eyes bulging with frustration.

‘I’m not sure there’s anything you can do. God. All that stuff you fixed up for him. All that effort … ’

‘I told him I loved him,’ she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. ‘And he just said it wasn’t enough.’ Her eyes were wide and bleak. ‘How am I supposed to live with that?’

I am the one in the family who knows everything. I read more than anyone else. I go to university. I am the one who is supposed to have all the answers.

But I looked at my big sister, and I shook my head. ‘I haven’t got a clue,’ I said.

She finally emerged the following day, showered and wearing clean clothes, and I told Mum and Dad not to say a word. I implied it was boyfriend trouble, and Dad raised his eyebrows and made a face as if that explained everything and God only knew what we had been working ourselves into such a fuss over. Mum ran off to ring the Bingo Club and tell them she’d had second thoughts about the risks of air travel.

Lou ate a piece of toast (she didn’t want lunch) and she put on a big floppy sunhat and we walked up to the castle with Thomas to feed the ducks. I don’t think she really wanted to go out, but Mum insisted that we all needed some fresh air. This, in my mother’s vocabulary, meant she was itching to get into the bedroom and air it and change the bedding. Thomas skipped and hopped ahead of us, clutching a plastic bag full of crusts, and we negotiated the meandering tourists with an ease born of years of practice, ducking out of the way of swinging backpacks, separating around posing couples and rejoining on the other side. The castle baked in the high heat of summer, the ground cracked and the grass wispy, like the last hairs on the head of a balding man. The flowers in the tubs looked defeated, as if they were already half preparing for autumn.

Lou and I didn’t say much. What was there to say?

As we walked past the tourist car park I saw her glance under her brim at the Traynors’ house. It stood, elegant and red-brick, its tall blank windows disguising whatever life-changing drama was being played out in there, perhaps even at this moment.

‘You could go and talk to him, you know,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait here for you.’

She looked at the ground, folded her arms across her chest, and we kept walking. ‘There’s no point,’ she said. I knew the other bit, the bit she didn’t say aloud. He’s probably not even there.

We did a slow circuit of the castle, watching Thomas roll down the steep parts of the hill, feeding the ducks that by this stage in the season were so well stuffed they could barely be bothered to come over for mere bread. I watched my sister as we walked, seeing her brown back exposed by her halter-neck top, her stooped shoulders, and I realized that even if she didn’t know it yet, everything had changed for her. She wouldn’t stay here now, no matter what happened with Will Traynor. She had an air about her, a new air of knowledge, of things seen, places she had been. My sister finally had new horizons.

‘Oh,’ I said, as we headed back towards the gates, ‘you got a letter. From the college, while you were away. Sorry – I opened it. I thought it must be for me.’

‘You opened it?’

I had been hoping it was extra grant money.

‘You got an interview.’

She blinked, as if receiving news from some long-distant past.

‘Yeah. And the big news is, it’s tomorrow,’ I said. ‘So I thought maybe we should go over some possible questions tonight.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t go to an interview tomorrow.’

‘What else are you going to do?’

‘I can’t, Treen,’ she said, sorrowfully. ‘How am I supposed to think about anything at a time like this?’

‘Listen, Lou. They don’t give interviews out like bread for ducks, you eejit. This is a big deal. They know you’re a mature student, you’re applying at the wrong time of year, and they’re still going to see you. You can’t muck them around.’

‘I don’t care. I can’t think about it.’

‘But you –’

‘Just leave me alone, Treen. Okay? I can’t do it.’

‘Hey,’ I said. I stepped in front of her so that she couldn’t keep walking. Thomas was talking to a pigeon, a few paces up ahead. ‘This is exactly the time you have to think about it. This is the time when, like it or not, you finally have to work out what you are going to do with the rest of your life.’

We were blocking the path. Now the tourists had to separate to walk around us – they did so, heads down or eyeing with mild curiosity the arguing sisters.

‘I can’t.’

‘Well, tough. Because, in case you forgot, you have no job any more. No Patrick to pick up the pieces. And if you miss this interview, then in two days’ time you are headed back down the Job Centre to decide whether you want to be a chicken processor or a lap dancer or wipe some other person’s bum for a living. And believe it or not, because you are now headed for thirty, that’s your life pretty well mapped out. And all of this – everything you’ve learnt over the past six months – will have been a waste of time. All of it.’

She stared at me, wearing that look of mute fury she wears when she knows I am right and she can’t say anything back. Thomas appeared beside us now and pulled at my hand.

‘Mum … you said bum.’

My sister was still glaring at me. But I could see her thinking.

I turned to my son. ‘No, sweetheart, I said bun. We’re going to go home for tea now – aren’t we, Lou? – and see if we can have some buns. And then, while Granny gives you a bath, I’m going to help Auntie Lou do her homework.’

I went to the library the next day, and Mum looked after Thomas, so I saw Lou off on the bus and knew I wouldn’t see her again till teatime. I didn’t hold out a lot of hope for the interview, but from the moment I left her I didn’t actually give her another thought.

It might sound a bit selfish, but I don’t like getting behind with my coursework, and it was a bit of a relief to have a break from Lou’s misery. Being around someone that depressed is a bit of a drain. You might feel sorry for them, but you can’t help wanting to tell them to pull themselves together too. I shoved my family, my sister, the epic mess she had got herself into, into a mental file, shut the drawer, and focused my attention on VAT exemptions. I got the second-highest marks in my year for Accountancy 1 and there was no way on earth I was dropping back just because of the vagaries of HMRC’s flat rate system.

I got home around a quarter to six, put my files on the hall chair, and they were all lurking around the kitchen table already, while Mum began to serve up. Thomas jumped on me, winding his legs around my waist, and I kissed him, breathing in his lovely yeasty little-boy smell.

‘Sit down, sit down,’ Mum said. ‘Dad’s only just in.’

‘How’d you get on with your books?’ Dad said, hanging his jacket on the back of the chair. He always referred to them as ‘my books’. Like they had a life of their own and had to be wrangled into order.

‘Good, thanks. I’m three-quarters of the way through my Accountancy 2 module. And then tomorrow I’m on corporate law.’ I peeled Thomas from me and put him down on the chair next to me, one hand resting in his soft hair.

‘Hear that, Josie? Corporate law.’ Dad stole a potato from the dish and stuffed it into his mouth before Mum could see. He said it like he relished the sound of it. I suppose he probably did. We chatted for a bit about the kinds of things my module involved. Then we talked about Dad’s job – mostly about how the tourists broke everything. You wouldn’t believe the maintenance, apparently. Even the wooden posts at the car park gateway needed replacing every few weeks because the eejits couldn’t drive a car through a twelve-foot gap. Personally, I would have put a surcharge on the ticket price to cover it – but that’s just me.

Mum finished serving up, and finally sat down. Thomas ate with his fingers while he thought nobody noticed and said bum under his breath with a secret smile, and Granddad ate with his gaze tilted upwards, as if he were actually thinking about something else entirely. I glanced over at Lou. She was gazing at her plate, pushing the roast chicken around as if trying to disguise it. Uh-oh, I thought.

‘You not hungry, love?’ said Mum, following the line of my gaze.

‘Not very,’ she said.

‘It is very warm for chicken,’ Mum conceded. ‘I just thought you needed perking up a bit.’

‘So … you going to tell us how you got on at this interview?’ Dad’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

‘Oh, that.’ She looked distracted, as if he had just dredged up something she did five years ago.

‘Yes, that.’

She speared a tiny piece of chicken. ‘It was okay.’

Dad glanced at me.

I gave a tiny shrug. ‘Just okay? They must have given you some idea how you did.’

‘I got it.’

‘What?’

She was still looking down at her plate. I stopped chewing.

‘They said I was exactly the kind of applicant they were looking for. I’ve got to do some kind of foundation course, which takes a year, and then I can convert it.’

Dad sat back in his chair. ‘That’s fantastic news.’

Mum reached over and patted her shoulder. ‘Oh, well done, love. That’s brilliant.’

‘Not really. I don’t think I can afford four years of study.’

‘Don’t you worry about that just now. Really. Look how well Treena’s managing. Hey –’ he nudged her ‘– we’ll find a way. We always find a way, don’t we?’ Dad beamed at us both. ‘I think everything’s turning around for us, now, girls. I think this is going to be a good time for this family.’

And then, out of nowhere, she burst into tears. Real tears. She cried like Thomas cries, wailing, all snot and tears and not caring who hears, her sobs breaking through the silence of the little room like a knife.

Thomas stared at her, open-mouthed, so that I had to haul him on to my lap and distract him so that he didn’t get upset too. And while I fiddled with bits of potato and talking peas and made silly voices, she told them.

She told them everything – about Will and the six-month contract and what had happened when they went to Mauritius. As she spoke, Mum’s hands went to her mouth. Granddad looked solemn. The chicken grew cold, the gravy congealing in its boat.

Dad shook his head in disbelief. And then, as my sister detailed her flight home from the Indian Ocean, her voice dropping to a whisper as she spoke of her last words to Mrs Traynor, he pushed his chair back and stood up. He walked slowly around the table and he took her in his arms, like he had when we were little. He stood there and held her really, really tightly to him.

‘Oh Jesus Christ, the poor fella. And poor you. Oh Jesus.’

I’m not sure I ever saw Dad look so shocked.

‘What a bloody mess.’

‘You went through all this? Without saying anything? And all we got was a postcard about scuba diving?’ My mother was incredulous. ‘We thought you were having the holiday of a lifetime.’

‘I wasn’t alone. Treena knew,’ she said, looking at me. ‘Treena was great.’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said, hugging Thomas. He had lost interest in the conversation now that Mum had put an open tin of Celebrations in front of him. ‘I was just an ear. You did the lot. You came up with all the ideas.’

‘And some ideas they turned out to be.’ She leant against Dad, sounding bereft.

Dad tilted her chin so that she had to look at him. ‘But you did everything you could.’

‘And I failed.’

‘Who says you failed?’ Dad stroked her hair back from her face. His expression was tender. ‘I’m just thinking of what I know about Will Traynor, what I know about men like him. And I’ll say one thing to you. I’m not sure anyone in the world was ever going to persuade that man once he’d set his mind to something. He’s who he is. You can’t make people change who they are.’

‘But his parents! They can’t let him kill himself,’ said Mum. ‘What kind of people are they?’

‘They’re normal people, Mum. Mrs Traynor just doesn’t know what else she can do.’

‘Well, not bloody taking him to this clinic would be a start.’ Mum was angry. Two points of colour had risen to her cheekbones. ‘I would fight for you two, for Thomas, until my dying breath.’

‘Even if he’d already tried to kill himself?’ I said. ‘In really grim ways?’

‘He’s ill, Katrina. He’s depressed. People who are vulnerable should not be given the chance to do something that they’ll … ’ She tailed off in mute fury and dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. ‘That woman must be heartless. Heartless. And to think they got Louisa involved in all this. She’s a magistrate, for goodness’ sake. You’d think a magistrate would know what was right or wrong. Of all people. I’ve a good mind to head down there now and bring him back here.’

‘It’s complicated, Mum.’

‘No. It’s not. He’s vulnerable and there is no way on earth she should entertain the thought of it. I’m shocked. That poor man. That poor man.’ She got up from the table, taking the remains of the chicken with her, and stalked out to the kitchen.

Louisa watched her go, her expression a little stunned. Mum was never angry. I think the last time we heard her raise her voice was 1993.

Dad shook his head, his mind apparently elsewhere. ‘I’ve just thought – no wonder I haven’t seen Mr Traynor. I wondered where he was. I assumed they were all off on some family holiday.’

‘They’ve … they’ve gone?’

‘He’s not been in these last two days.’

Lou sat back down and slumped in her chair.

‘Oh shit,’ I said, and then clamped my hands around Thomas’s ears.

‘It’s tomorrow.’

Lou looked at me, and I glanced up at the calendar on the wall.

‘The thirteenth of August. It’s tomorrow.’

Lou did nothing that last day. She was up before me, staring out of the kitchen window. It rained, and then it cleared, and then it rained again. She lay on the sofa with Granddad, and she drank the tea that Mum made her, and every half an hour or so I watched her gaze slide silently towards the mantelpiece and check the clock. It was awful to watch. I took Thomas swimming and I tried to make her come with us. I said Mum would mind him if she wanted to go to the shops with me later. I said I’d take her to the pub, just the two of us, but she refused every offer.

‘What if I made a mistake, Treen?’ she said, so quietly that only I could hear it.

I glanced up at Granddad, but he had eyes only for the racing. I think Dad was still putting on a sneaky bet each way for him, even though he denied it to Mum.

‘What do you mean?’

‘What if I should have gone with him?’

‘But … you said you couldn’t.’

Outside, the skies were grey. She stared through our immaculate windows at the miserable day beyond.

‘I know what I said. But I just can’t bear not knowing what’s happening.’ Her face crumpled a little. ‘I can’t bear not knowing how he’s feeling. I can’t bear the fact that I never even got to say goodbye.’

‘Couldn’t you go now? Maybe try and get a flight?’

‘It’s too late,’ she said. And then she closed her eyes. ‘I’d never get there in time. There’s only two hours left until … until it stops for the day. I looked it up. On the internet.’

I waited.

‘They don’t … do … it … after five thirty.’ She shook her head in bemusement. ‘Something to do with the Swiss officials who have to be there. They don’t like … certifying … things outside office hours.’

I almost laughed. But I didn’t know what to say to her. I couldn’t imagine having to wait, as she was waiting, knowing what might be happening in some far-off place. I had never loved a man like she seemed to love Will. I had liked men, sure, and wanted to sleep with them, but sometimes I wondered if I was missing some sensitivity chip. I couldn’t imagine crying over anyone I’d been with. The only equivalent was if I thought about Thomas, waiting to die in some strange country, and as soon as that thought came to mind it made something inside me actually flip over, it was so hideous. So I stuck that in the back of my mental filing cabinet too, under the drawer labelled: Unthinkable.

I sat down beside my sister on the sofa and we stared in silence at the three thirty Maiden Stakes, then the four o’clock handicap stakes, and the four races that followed it, with the fixed intensity of people who might actually have all the money in the world on the winner.

And then the doorbell rang.

Louisa was off the sofa and in the hallway in seconds. She opened the door and the way she wrenched it open made even my heart stop.

But it wasn’t Will there on the doorstep. It was a young woman, her make-up thick and perfectly applied, her hair cut in a neat bob around her chin. She folded her umbrella and smiled, reaching round towards the large bag she had over her shoulder. I wondered briefly if this was Will Traynor’s sister.

‘Louisa Clark?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m from The Globe. I wondered if I could have a quick word?’

‘The Globe?’

I could hear the confusion in Lou’s voice.

‘The newspaper?’ I stepped behind my sister. I saw then the notepad in the woman’s hand.

‘Can I come in? I’d just like to have a little chat with you about William Traynor. You do work for William Traynor, don’t you?’

‘No comment,’ I said. And before the woman had a chance to say anything else, I slammed the door in her face.

My sister stood stunned in the hallway. She flinched as the doorbell rang again.

‘Don’t answer it,’ I hissed.

‘But how –?’

I began to push her up the stairs. God, she was impossibly slow. It was like she was half asleep. ‘Granddad, don’t answer the door!’ I yelled. ‘Who have you told?’ I said, when we reached the landing. ‘Someone must have told them. Who knows?’

‘Miss Clark,’ the woman’s voice came through the letter box. ‘If you just give me ten minutes … we do understand this is a very sensitive issue. We’d like you to put your side of the story … ’

‘Does this mean he’s dead?’ Her eyes had filled with tears.

‘No, it just means some arse is trying to cash in.’ I thought for a minute.

‘Who was that, girls?’ Mum’s voice came up the stairwell.

‘No one, Mum. Just don’t answer the door.’

I peered over the banister. Mum was holding a tea towel in her hands and gazing at the shadowy figure visible through the glass panels of the front door.

‘Don’t answer the door?’

I took my sister’s elbow. ‘Lou … you didn’t say anything to Patrick, did you?’

She didn’t need to say anything. Her stricken face said it all.

‘Okay. Don’t have a baby. Just don’t go near the door. Don’t answer the phone. Don’t say a word to them, okay?’

Mum was not amused. She was even less amused after the phone started ringing. After the fifth call we put all calls through to the answerphone, but we still had to listen to them, their voices invading our little hallway. There were four or five of them, all the same. All offering Lou the chance to put her side of ‘the story’, as they called it. Like Will Traynor was now some commodity that they were all scrabbling over. The telephone rang and the doorbell rang. We sat with the curtains closed, listening to the reporters on the pavement just outside our gate, chatting to each other and speaking on their mobile phones.

It was like being under siege. Mum wrung her hands and shouted through the letter box for them to get the hell out of our front garden, whenever one of them ventured past the gate. Thomas gazed out of the upstairs bathroom window and wanted to know why there were people in our garden. Four of our neighbours rang, wanting to know what was going on. Dad parked in Ivy Street and came home via the back garden, and we had a fairly serious talk about castles and boiling oil.

Then, after I’d thought a bit longer, I rang Patrick and asked him how much he had got for his sordid little tip. The slight delay before he denied everything told me all I needed to know.

‘You shitbag,’ I yelled. ‘I’m going to kick your stupid marathon-running shins so hard you’re going to think 157th was actually a good result.’

Lou just sat in the kitchen and cried. Not proper sobbing, just silent tears that ran down her face and which she wiped away with the palm of her hand. I couldn’t think what to say to her.

Which was fine. I had plenty to say to everyone else.

All but one of the reporters cleared off by half past seven. I didn’t know if they had given up, or if Thomas’s habit of posting bits of Lego out of the letter box every time they passed another note through had become boring. I told Louisa to bath Thomas for me, mainly because I wanted her to get out of the kitchen, but also because that way I could go through all the messages on our answerphone and delete the newspaper ones while she couldn’t hear me. Twenty-six. Twenty-six of the buggers. And all sounding so nice, so understanding. Some of them even offered her money.

I pressed delete on every one. Even those offering money, although I admit I was a teeny bit tempted to see how much they were offering. All the while, I heard Lou talking to Thomas in the bathroom, the whine and splash of him dive-bombing his six inches of soapsuds with the Batmobile. That’s the thing you don’t know about children unless you have them – bath time, Lego and fish fingers don’t allow you to dwell on tragedy for too long. And then I hit the last message.

‘Louisa? It’s Camilla Traynor. Will you call me? As soon as possible?’

I stared at the answerphone. I rewound and replayed it. Then I ran upstairs and whipped Thomas out of the bath so fast my boy didn’t even know what hit him. He was standing there, the towel wrapped tightly around him like a compression bandage, and Lou, stumbling and confused, was already halfway down the stairs, me pushing her by the shoulder.

‘What if she hates me?’

‘She didn’t sound like she hated you.’

‘But what if the press are surrounding them there? What if they think it’s all my fault?’ Her eyes were wide and terrified. ‘What if she’s ringing to tell me he’s done it?’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Lou. For once in your life, just get a grip. You won’t know anything unless you call. Call her. Just call. You don’t have a bloody choice.’

I ran back into the bathroom, to set Thomas free. I shoved him into his pyjamas, told him that Granny had a biscuit for him if he ran to the kitchen super fast. And then I peered out of the bathroom door, to peek at my sister on the phone down in the hallway.

She was turned away from me, one hand smoothing the hair at the back of her head. She reached out a hand to steady herself.

‘Yes,’ she was saying. ‘I see.’ And then, ‘Okay.’

And after a pause, ‘Yes.’

She looked down at her feet for a good minute after she’d put the phone down.

‘Well?’ I said.

She looked up as if she’d only just seen me there, and shook her head.

‘It was nothing about the newspapers,’ she said, her voice still numb with shock. ‘She asked me – begged me – to come to Switzerland. And she’s booked me on to the last flight out this evening.’