Bridget parks the van and turns off the engine. From the car park she can see the light on in the kitchen, the silhouette of her sister bent forward over the kitchen table. Is she crying? It’s possible. It’s always possible. But Bridget needs a minute, just today, just this once. In her leather-jacket pocket she finds her pouch of Golden Virginia, her tips and her papers. It only takes her a minute to roll a cigarette and, digging her Zippo from her other pocket, she pushes her back into the driver’s seat and opens the van window. The sun is sinking. It’s turned chilly, but her jacket is warm. She hunches her shoulders a little against the cold that blows on her neck. In the momentary peace, she lights her cigarette. The lighter has her initials engraved on the side: BC. A gift from Helen.

Helen will be at the airport by now, bound for LA. Bridget wonders how she’ll get on, whether she’ll be happy there in the City of Angels. Who she’ll meet. Less than an hour ago, Bridget called in on her way home, to the house they used to share, rooms full of stuff, full of memories, full of so much that still belongs to both of them. She called in, as she often does, but this time to say goodbye. Helen has always stopped writing by late afternoon, so even in the early days after the accident, when Bridget used to pick Rosie up from school, she would take her for a hot chocolate and then on to see Helen. Now there is no need, no reason, no excuse to call in, but it is a habit neither of them seems able to break. And besides, who would feed the cat when Helen is away, if not Bridget?

‘I want you to be happy,’ Bridget made herself say in the moments before she left. She’s become superstitious about journeys, and especially about goodbyes.

‘I’m not totally unhappy,’ Helen replied, smiling the way a person smiles when they’ve burnt their finger or stubbed their toe in front of people they don’t know well.

‘Me neither,’ Bridget said. ‘Not, you know, totally.’

Helen took Bridget’s hand, rubbed her thumb across the knuckles, down to the silver skull pinky ring. ‘I worry about you, Bridge.’

‘You need someone to worry about, Titch.’

‘Do you ever call anyone by their actual name?’

‘Only my probation officer.’

‘Very funny. Stop diverting. You could find someone.’

‘So could you.’

‘I know, but you could find someone nice.’

‘Nice-looking girl like me, you mean?’

The living-room door was ajar. Through the crack, through the front window of the house, she could see the light already falling. There in the hallway, it was all but dark. Helen’s eyes are green. Bridget thinks of them now as she stares across the backyard at the flat she now shares with her sister, that hunched silhouette crying in the kitchen.

She tips back her head, sucks, feels the rush of nicotine.

I’m not totally unhappy. It’s enough, isn’t it? It has to be. The pact with her little sister was made not years but decades ago now. God, she’s old. She feels it then with the force of a punch. She’s always looked out for Toni, ever since they were kids. Too far apart for sibling rivalry, she used to take Toni out in her pushchair, show her off on the streets of Hounslow. She took her into Richmond for her first legal drink (albeit years after her first actual drink), took Rosie to the same pub for hers, illegally, just the other month, when she was fifteen. Not that Toni knows that – Christ, no, she would kill her – but some things belong to her and Rosie. Auntie’s privileges, small comforts. So much has been lost; so much has been broken. The kid has been her consolation. When Rosie was born, Bridget was the first person at the hospital after Stan, and he’d been there for the birth.

You make a promise like that, a pact, it doesn’t go away because you’ve grown up. It is inked into the skin, branded into the heart. Toni is her sister. She and Rosie are her family. And that is all.

She pulls on her cigarette. There is a little grass in the tobacco, which she mixed in, anticipating this moment when she would unpick the tangle of herself after saying goodbye to Titch. And here she sits, teasing and laying out the tattered threads one by one.

I’m going to fucking kill you, you fucking sick bastard.

She had thrown Eric against his bedroom wall so hard his head made a dent in the cheap wallpapered plasterboard. She won’t forget the whites of his eyes, the flash of black, panicked iris. His sweat, his stale tobacco breath, his stale, spunky room.

‘And after that, I’m going to call the police myself.’

‘Aw, Bridge. Bridge, mate. Don’t. Don’t be like that. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

He was shaking like the coward he was. Not admitting it even now that his grimy secret was out. And then, when she had her hands around his revolting little throat, when, gasping for breath, he confessed to what he’d done, he had the audacity to blame it on Toni. She’d led him on. She’d given him the eye. She was a slut, a prick-tease.

‘She’s fucking fourteen, you fucking piece of shit.’

She never called the police. No one did. Her family don’t do police, and family affairs are no one else’s business. If she went back to that moment, she’d do the same: the threat, the pact, everything. But sometimes, on dark and lonely nights like this, she realises she never anticipated the practicalities. Does anyone, about any kind of choice? Marriage, children, anti-establishment, corporate, free spirit, committed partner, raise your voice in protest, stay silent… everything, everything has a practical side.

Everything has a price.