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But she wasn’t a competent drinker. Her stomach had heaved, her head spun and she had run, with awkward, slip-slidey steps, to the exit. Had barely made it before her stomach emptied itself, the vomit pooling into the mud.

Then she had seen them. Mara and Dave were tucked towards the back of the tent, seemingly ignorant of the rain that had begun to fall around them. Had their arms wrapped around each other, their bodies locked together, moving in an unsteady, out-of-beat rhythm to the music.

Imogen had stood there for impossibly long moments, watching, her brain spinning, trying to work it out, and cursing the tequila for making it so damned difficult. Because surely, if she stared long enough, there would be an explanation. She had watched as Dave’s hand snaked across her sister’s back, working its way down so that it rested, cupped around her buttock. Had watched as her sister looked up, smiled.

Then Imogen had turned and run, an awkward movement, her thin, strapped shoes sliding on the uneven boardwalks. Telling herself that it didn’t matter, that they were both single, that they could get together if they wanted. And after all she hadn’t told Mara what she was feeling, not really; had kept it all tucked up in herself the way she always did, so that her sister couldn’t be expected to know. And you couldn’t blame Mara for that. It was Imogen’s own fault. She had got into bed and had closed her eyes and waited, until a little after three, when the front door screed open and ragged laughter was carried up the stairs and through the walls, until it seemed like it was everywhere. And then footsteps, a door closing, the sounds of a bed creaking. Imogen had cried herself to sleep.

Imogen slid the car into an empty space, at the top of the hill. Looked at their house through her rear-view mirror. Dave’s car sitting outside. She sat, stared at it. Wanted to cry.

She had awoken, on the morning following the ball, and for a moment hadn’t known what had woken her. Then heard the low thrum of voices through the walls. Her sister’s voice, low, insistent. ‘It was a mistake. You need to go. Before . . . look, just go.’ Another voice – a man’s – lower, almost whispering, and no matter how much she had strained, she couldn’t hear the words, could just make out the tone of it, the need. Then footsteps. A door slamming.

Had lain there, had stared at the ceiling, had felt something that seemed strangely like relief. She couldn’t tell who the man was, she hadn’t heard him well enough. He could have been someone else. In all likelihood, would have been. The captain of the fencing team, probably, that Scottish guy. Because he was the one Mara had wanted, and Mara always got what she wanted. She didn’t want Dave. She didn’t even like him, not really. It would have been someone else.

Imogen pulled the keys from the ignition, cradled them in her hand. Watched the sun sinking low in the sky. She could see the sea from here, a burst of blue that snaked its way in between the houses.

She didn’t see him again that year, not for months and months and months. Not until the summer had moved into autumn and then into winter, and even then it was an accident, a chance meeting: him walking into the library, her walking out. A quick recoil, him thinking that she was her sister, and then, when he realised that it was in fact her, a smile. Hanging in the doorway, getting in everyone’s way, because he wanted to talk to her.

Telling herself that it was okay, because everyone makes mistakes.

Imogen had never asked Mara. She had never asked Dave. Because there are some things that you are just better off not knowing.

Imogen pushed at the car door. She stood there in the sunlit evening street. Looking at the keys in her hand, then across her shoulder at the sea. It would be all right. Everything would be all right. She slammed the door behind her and walked with quick steps, slipping her key into the lock. Upstairs the shower was running.

She would change. Shake off the worries of the day, start the evening fresh. She would do them something nice for dinner. A steak, perhaps. Imogen ran softly up the stairs.

Afterwards, Imogen would wonder what it was, what made her do it. But, for that moment, there was no thought. The bathroom door was closed, the sound of water thumping, a typhoon in a teacup. The bedroom door standing open. Was it the wardrobe door? Was that what did it? A little half-inch of space, where usually there was a seal, just beckoning Imogen inside. Afterwards, all Imogen would remember was that it had seemed as natural as breathing, that she had walked into the bedroom and then, without thinking, it seemed, crossed the floor to Dave’s wardrobe. Afterwards, it would seem that it had called to her, that somehow she had heard it, and that was why she opened the wardrobe door.

Imogen stood there, staring into the dark depths of the wardrobe. At first it seemed that all she could see was clothes, misshapen mounded piles. The sensible thing to do would be to accept that, to walk away. Imogen plunged her hand in, through dense fabric, reaching, reaching. She did not know what she was looking for, and yet somehow it seemed that she knew exactly what it was that she would find.

Her fingers gripped something cold.

There are moments when the world seems to lay itself out before you, showing itself for what it is. It seemed to Imogen that this was one of them. Her stomach lurched, felt like she would vomit.

She pulled the rifle free.

It was surprisingly light for something that could do so much damage.

She weighted the gun, staring into the wardrobe, into the hole in the fabric that she had just made. A box of ammunition.

‘What are you doing?’

Imogen started, spun; hadn’t heard the shower stop, Dave’s footsteps. Dave stood on the threshold to their bedroom, a towel slung around his waist, hair hanging wet. Looked from her to the gun, back.

‘I . . .’ There was a speech, there were things she should be saying. But she wasn’t saying any of them. Instead she was standing in their bedroom, holding a gun. ‘Dave . . .’

‘Give me the gun.’

‘Why is it here? What are you . . .?’

‘Imogen, just give me the damn gun.’ He leaned into her, drowning her in an overwhelming smell of soap and anger.

Now, suddenly, Imogen was afraid. She stared at him, no idea suddenly who he was, where it was he had come from. She should have given him the gun, should have just handed it right back to him. But her body had taken over, had dethroned her brain, and she was clinging to the gun like a life-raft in a choppy sea. A single thought that seemed to come from out of the pure blue sky: if I give him the gun, he’s going to kill me.

So Imogen stood there, holding onto the weapon like she would have any idea what to do with it anyway. And then Dave was leaning into her, as if he was going to kiss her, but his face curled up into an expression that she just didn’t recognise, his fingers reaching for the gun. And she wasn’t sure how it happened, whether it was his pulling or her pushing, but somehow she was falling, an impossibly long way, falling for ever, and he was grabbing for her, and then a crack as her head hit the wall behind her. Then nothing.

I SIT ON
my bed. I don’t remember the drive home or when I finally made the decision to leave, to cast one last look at Mara’s house, start my engine – my fate final. I don’t remember if there was traffic, or whether the steering was light on the slick roads. I am damp, my clothes sticking to me like they have been glued there, but I don’t remember getting wet. I don’t remember picking up the gun. But there it sits in my hand, heavy and full of promise. I stare at it distantly. In my other hand, my mobile phone. I don’t know why. Because it is already too late, the decision has been made, the path before me inevitable. But still I cling to it. Like there is still a part of me that is waiting to be saved.

We lasted longer than I could have expected, Mara and I, although still not as long as I would have hoped. I couldn’t tell you now how long it was, because it seems that my entire life began and ended with her. Although I suppose in some ways that’s true. I loved her. And then she was gone.

The end happened suddenly. Looking back now, I know I should have expected it, seen it coming. With all of the baggage that we carried, it never was going to last for ever. And with all such things there is an inevitability about their ending. That the universe will once again re-establish itself, reminding you that you are irretrievably alone.

But still the ending of it took me by surprise. We were eating together, a process that involved a certain amount of subterfuge. But where she was careful, I was careless, in the truest sense of it. I didn’t care. I wanted everyone to know. She was quieter than normal, seemed to have sunk in on herself. So I spoke for both of us. Seems now that I spoke more in those few months than I have ever spoken in my entire life. I talked about my day, I complained about the traffic, all the while congratulating myself on the normality of it all. Watched her as she pushed the curry across her plate, movements listless.

‘You okay?’ I asked.

‘I’m fine.’ Mara didn’t look at me when she spoke. It was only afterwards, when I replayed it, that I would hear the impatience in her voice, would see her posture – that slight turn in her shoulders, the ever so subtle lean away from me – would tell myself that I should have seen it coming.

Then she had pushed her plate away, her movements electric-shock sudden, had hurried from her seat, her hand clasped across her mouth. And me staring after her like a moron. Could hear her, in the downstairs bathroom, the retching. My first thought that there must have been something wrong with the food, but then how could that be, when she had eaten so little of it anyway? Then came my second thought, slower to arrive than my first, its progress dragged down by its weight.

I stood up. Stared at the closed bathroom door.

It took minutes or hours for her to emerge, her face ashen. She wouldn’t look at me. I should have known then what would come next.

‘You’re pregnant.’ The words tasted strange in my mouth, like peppermint when you expect orange.

Mara’s gaze had snapped up then, fixing me in its spotlight. She had opened her mouth, closed it. A child caught throwing stones. She looked down and away, and I could see it, that she was struggling to think up a palatable lie.

‘You are, aren’t you? You’re pregnant?’

In those moments, short though they were, I had already written our future. A house with a garden. A dog perhaps. A swing-set. Us together, naturally. Our child. Someone of my own, someone of my blood. I had never met anyone to whom I was related. Not since I was three years old. But this child would make all that different. Would be an extension of me, something to anchor me to the rest of the world. This child would change everything. It seemed impossible and inevitable, all at once.

Then Mara shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

That stopped me, pulled me up short, as I’m sure it was meant to. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not keeping it anyway.’

Now the future that had, in the space of seconds, become set in stone in my head began to crumble, a brick at a time. I stared at her, trying to make sense out of her words, hoping and hoping that I was going crazy, that what I had heard wasn’t what she had said, wasn’t what she meant. But she was looking back at me with a flat stare, one that she’d never used on me before. An expression of impatience on her face, like she was irritated with me.

‘It’s done,’ Mara said. ‘I’ve already booked the abortion. It’s all been arranged.’

There are things I should have said, words I should have used that would have changed her mind. But I was too slow, too stupid to find them. And I simply stood there, stared at her.

It was already too late. Her mind, she said, was made up. No matter that I begged her, that I pleaded, got down onto my knees, grabbed at her fingers like a child. That I needed this – that I needed her, needed our child, to tie me to the human race, to keep me from drifting off into space as had seemed inevitable before, as seemed increasingly inevitable now. She looked down at me, her face a struggle of pity and disgust. No. It’s my body. It’s my decision. But, I will take care of you, I had said. You can divorce him. You can ring Jack right now, tell him that it’s over. I’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of Amy. I love you.

Mara had looked down at me, looked through me. I’m sorry. I can’t. See, the thing is, I just don’t love you. Not the way that you love me. I’m sorry. And the baby, I understand how you feel, I do, I really do. Please don’t think that I’m a bitch. But I just can’t keep it. It’s just too inconvenient.

Inconvenient.

The truth of my existence.

I have always been simply inconvenient.

To the mother who dumped me, who left me sodden and wandering, a child adrift, in the grounds of Mount Pleasant Hospital. So inconvenient that she leaves me there and then climbs to the top of a multi-storey car park and throws herself onto the concrete below.

To the siblings, the two pairs. The natural ones, so alike one another that it is painful to see, who look at me from some great distance, that now-familiar cocktail of sympathy and disdain. The adopted ones, with their rough edges, sticking together like they are the only two remaining pieces in a jigsaw, no room for anyone else in there because they watch the world with a suspicious eye, and they know the danger that outsiders can bring.

To the father, never there. Because he has five kids to support on a meagre pay cheque, and he could just about manage the four, but it was the mother who pushed for this fifth and final cuckoo in the nest, and it tipped the balance, in their finances, in their marriage. So that when he is there, he is there with a face puckered by frowns, and a sharp tongue that only gets sharper when he sees me, the beginning of their end. And then, after thirty years of marriage, one day he is simply gone, dead from a cerebral aneurysm, a vanishing so total and complete that it seems like he has never been.