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I didn’t sleep much last night. Kept finding myself back on that embankment, peering over Del’s shoulder down at the body lying prone on the eastbound carriageway of the M4. Only this time, I can see her face. I know that I didn’t, would never have known that it was Emily had Del not told me, but my memory doesn’t seem to believe that. Now, when I think about it, I can see those tight curls splayed around her shoulders, dirty blonde, dirtier now than they should be. Rounded cheeks, nose just that little bit too large. So I can’t sleep. Because every time I try, I see Emily lying dead.

I blow out a breath, turn my head to suck in more air. Stroke, stroke, breathe. Aden hits the opposite wall, a quick spin and he’s gone again. Only this time he catches my eye through the chlorinated blue, gives me a waterlogged grin. I smile back, leaving my tumble a little late, so that I have to pull it in and it’s clumsy, my foot hitting the wall at an off angle. I swear under my breath.

Fourteen years. For fourteen years, I told myself that Emily and I had grown apart. But in truth, the distance that separated us came from me running, as fast as I could, in the opposite direction. My gentle, kind, brilliant father, dead of a heart attack at the meagre age of forty-five, and me, sixteen years old and so angry I could barely breathe. It had seemed easier, at the time, to mourn all of it together, my old life, rather than to be reminded, every time I looked at remnants of it, about the hole that my father had left. Emily tried for a while, kept calling, but in the end the calls tailed off and the bifurcation of my world became complete. I assume that she moved on, found new friends, perhaps ones less fickle.

I can see Aden up ahead, his bare skin blue through the water. Can see that he has stopped, can tell from the position of his shoulders, the shape of his back, that he is looking upwards, checking the time. We’ll have a two-minute rest. Then another set of thirty.

I reach my hand out ahead, allow my fingers to grasp at the lipped edge of the wall.

Aden smiles at me. Gives a nod down the increasingly crowded swim-lane. ‘Busy today.’

‘Yeah.’ I shrug. ‘You know what it’s like. As soon as the weather turns, people will suddenly decide that the idea of getting soaking wet isn’t such a great one.’ I spare a quick glance at the clock. Thirty seconds in. ‘So, how’s work?’

He doesn’t look at me. Keeps his gaze on the swimmers. ‘It’s . . . okay. You know how it is. Rhys and Tony are back on Firearms, did I tell you that?’

I shake my head. ‘How are they finding it? It’s been a while for them, right?’

‘A year, just about. Tony’s Tony. It’s like water off a duck’s back with him. Rhys, I think it’s knocked his confidence. I get that. That kind of thing, it stays with you.’ Aden glances at me. ‘You saw how it was.’

I didn’t know Aden then, not really. He was just some guy from the pool, both of us gluttons for punishment, crawling out of bed in the pre-dawn darkness and plunging into the frigid water. We didn’t speak, not for a long time. I can be difficult to get to know. I would come and swim my lengths, and Aden would come and swim his, and then we would leave again. After a while – a couple of months maybe – we progressed to hello. I was fairly impressed with myself. He became, I suppose, a part of the scenery.

Then the night of the shooting.

I was working a late shift in the newsroom. I was bored. So bored that when the police scanner sparked to life with the flurry of words, each tilted with the inflection of stress, I grabbed my coat, poured out into the driving rain and ran for my car. I wove through the city traffic, heading away from the bright lights, wide streets, up the hills, so that the sea splays out behind you, and you inevitably think what a beautiful view this would be to wake up to. And then you turn around to face the club-footed council houses, the shells of cars hoisted onto breeze blocks, the general air of decay and despair, and you remember that the view isn’t everything.

They were easy to find. The blue police lights shining out from the hill of Harddymaes like a beacon. I’d parked the car, just beyond the police line, had pulled an old black umbrella out from under the driver’s seat, cursing at the exposed wire that worked its way free. Tucked my coat tighter around myself and walked quickly.

At first it was hard to make out what I was seeing. There was the ambulance, its blue light swirling, back doors flung open. A shadowy dance of figures down a narrow alley, all speaking low and urgent. And a dark shape, sitting on the kerb, a river of water running along the gutter beneath his legs, a guttering cigarette cupped in his hand.

I didn’t realise that it was Aden. Not at first. Then he had looked up at me, and in spite of the dark uniform and the look of horror that he wore, I had realised who he was.

The rain was driving, a torrential downpour that would, in the days to come, lead to flooding in the lower grounds, a school closing when its assembly hall became steeped with rising waters. But on that night the rain had only just begun its deluge. Aden had stared at me. Not at my face at first, his gaze resting rather at chest height, on my press pass, and that look had crossed his face – the one that I am so accustomed to now, fear and anger combined. Then his gaze had tracked upwards, recognition slowly dawning.

I had stood there like that for long moments, before time unstuck. I stepped closer, allowing my feet to sink down into the river in the gutter. Had sat down beside him, repositioning my umbrella so that it covered him too.

I remember him looking at me, features twisted into a murky confusion. I know that he was waiting for me to start poking, trying to scratch out the story. And of course I had an in, didn’t I? We swam together.

I never did ask. We just sat there, in the pouring-down rain, as the water rose above our ankles, sharing a companionable silence.

After that we became friends.

‘A friend of mine died yesterday,’ I say now in a conversational tone, then want to kick myself – the neediness of the words, the way they seem to caw for attention. ‘I don’t know if you heard about it?’ I mumble. ‘It was on the news. Emily. They found her on the M4.’

Aden looks at me, and I can see the interplay of emotions darting across his face, trying to select the right thing to say. ‘I . . . I’m sorry. I heard on the news. I didn’t know you knew her.’

I thought of my father’s funeral, stuffy in spite of the cold outside. Walking back down the aisle, seeing the doors ahead open, orange and brown leaves mounding into piles just beyond. My mother’s hand on my shoulder. Emily sitting at the back, watching me, face taut with sympathy. I still think about that, how much courage that takes, facing that much raw grief head-on. Never once looking away.

‘A long time ago.’ I said. ‘I haven’t seen her in . . . a long time.’ I watch the swimmers and suppress a shiver, inactivity making me cold. ‘She was a nurse. In Mount Pleasant, I think.’ An old man swims awkwardly towards us, his gait uneven, stroke wild, and we both move slightly as he claws for the wall, stops to pull in a rasping breath and then, a look of determination to him, turns to set off again. ‘Emily was a nice girl. It’s . . . sad.’ Such a small word, so inadequate, in the circumstances.

Aden doesn’t say anything for long moments, is watching the old man as he swims, an awkward half-doggy paddle, and I feel briefly ridiculous, that my unsolicited confidence has landed awkwardly, has made the air chill. Then he looks at me, with a look that seems wary, fearful almost. ‘She worked in Mount Pleasant Hospital?’

I frown. ‘I . . . yeah, I think so.’ Then it comes back to me, something that Del said on the side of the M4, lost in the ringing of a phone. ‘Yes. She did. She worked on the ward with . . . with that boy.’

‘Dylan Lowe?’ He doesn’t look at me when he says it, the words coming slow, like they are more than he can handle saying.

I nod. A heavy silence settles between us, broken only by the sound of lapping water.

‘She called the police, the night before last. Did you know that?’ Aden still isn’t looking at me, is staring off into the distance.

‘Emily did?’

He nods. ‘She called to report a man trying to get into the ward. Said that she saw a gun.’

I stare at him, suddenly far, far colder.

IT WAS THE
fall off a perilously high cliff that had woken her. Imogen sat up, the wooden-armed chair groaning with the movement. A spiking pain raced its way up the nape of her neck, the hangover of an awkward night in the dimly lit hospital room. Amy was asleep still, her elfin frame curled into a knot beneath the rough hospital blankets, fine red hair splayed out across the pillow. Imogen pushed herself up, squinting with murky eyes. Could see the soft rise, fall, of her niece’s chest, rosebud lips lightly puckered. The ragged dog that she slept with lay curled in her baby-fat fists. Imogen’s heartbeat slowed, just a little.

Imogen had stood, had felt as if she was sunken into the linoleum floor, watching as the doctors moved around Amy, her little body shaking, so that the bed clattered in a painful drumbeat. Mara crying silent tears, clutching at her stomach, as if the pain were a physical one. Imogen not breathing, holding her twin upright, just to keep her from crumbling to the floor. Seemed impossible that there could be any coming back from this. Then, with one final thud, a silence had fallen. Amy’s body sinking down against the bed and not rising again, and then, after hours, the sound of a deep, difficult breath. Imogen had watched as the white-coated shoulders sank, heads turning in shared glances of relief. Then waiting, long moments as the observers hung there, waiting to see if the peace would hold.

Finally, after centuries of silence, a doctor, middle-aged, jeans sticking out from beneath his white coat, turning to them. A brief nod, a tight smile. ‘The seizure seems to have passed.’

Mara had let loose a noise, something between a yelp and a sob, had broken free of her sister and run the scant few yards that separated her from her daughter. Imogen had grasped the doctor’s arm, in gratitude or to steady herself, she wasn’t sure. ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’

‘You’re Amy’s aunt?’

‘Yes.’

The doctor had nodded, eyes on his patient, curled now inside her mother’s arms. ‘Has she ever had a seizure before? Any family history that you know of?’

Imogen shook her head. ‘No, I—’

‘Her father . . .’ interrupted Mara, ‘her father had some seizures, when he was little.’

‘Will she be all right? Will this happen again?’

‘We’ll keep her in for a couple of days. Run some tests. See if we can’t figure out why it happened.’ He had glanced back at Mara, cradling her daughter tight. ‘Try not to worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it.’

There was daylight now, a line of it working its way through the crack in the thin curtains. Imogen shifted, thinking that she could smell food, wondering if it was possible that there were people here in this children’s ward who could still eat. Mara was lying now, stretched out on her daughter’s bed, had wrapped herself around Amy, one arm flung across her waist. Matryoshka dolls, nested one within the other. Her eyes wide open, staring across the top of the little girl’s head.

‘Mara?’ said Imogen, softly. ‘Did you sleep?’

Mara started, her eyes wide. ‘No. I wanted to stay awake. In case . . .’ She seemed to wince, turning her face into her daughter.

‘She’s going to be okay, Mar.’

Seemed like it had always been this way. Identical twins, born three minutes apart. Imogen was the older, in time, in everything really. Had come out lusty and screaming, a respectable six pounds. Mara had followed – by all tellings of it – limp and blue, barely touching the scales at four pounds one. There was, they had said, a heart condition, something they hadn’t picked up during pregnancy, because scans then weren’t what they were now, and so much of the foetus inside remained a mystery, something waiting to be unwrapped like a gift on Christmas morning. But not all gifts are equal. Mara had survived, grudgingly, each breath a struggle that it seemed inevitable she would lose. They had operated, once, twice, three times. So much so that the hospital had become a second home to the twins, the smell of detergent and death an integral part of their growing up. You must take care of your sister, their mother had said, she’s so much smaller than you, and she’s very, very poorly. She’ll need you to look after her, Imogen.

Mara raised a hand, movement tremulous, wiped a tear away.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Imogen. ‘I shouldn’t have slept. Look, I’m awake now.’ Leaned forward in her chair, a bright but plastic smile to demonstrate just how alert she was. ‘I’ll keep an eye on Amy, I promise. Why don’t you just try and close your eyes?’

Mara nodded, obedient as a child, her eyelids drifting shut. It would, Imogen supposed, never end. It would never be the case that her first instinct would not be to take care of her sister. That was simply how they were made, two halves of a whole. Once the heart was mended, and Mara had gained her strength, they had never again left one another’s side. Had gone through school, sitting side-by-side at the same desk. Had stayed on to do A-levels, applied for the same university, the same university halls. Because when you were a twin, what else did you do? Marriage, Imogen supposed, was what made the biggest difference, although even that was in name only. They lived around the corner from one another. Imogen in the small terrace that had been as much as she and Dave could afford in Mumbles, on the combined salaries of a small-time journalist and a psychologist. Mara in the larger house that sat on top of the hill – a perk of Jack’s well-paid chief-inspector role. Imogen didn’t mind that, the smaller house tucked into a quiet terrace. It was homely, they had a view of the sea. And it meant that she got to see Mara and Amy every day.

There were voices outside the door, the low rumble of conversation, and Imogen glanced up, a quick look at the clock. Her parents would be here by nine. Her father quiet, stoic, keeping his jaw locked tight so that no one saw the pain when he looked at his granddaughter in her hospital bed. Her mother, face a storm of tension. Blaming the doctors, blaming everybody, because that way it felt like control. Imogen rubbed her eyes, needed a shower, a change of clothes. But her first client was due in at 8.30, and then she had back-to-back appointments for the rest of the day.