Lisa sat with her handbag tucked neatly by her feet and her back straight, sipping her tea as if she was on her best behaviour.

‘So you’re here all on your own?’

‘Yes. Shania has stayed a couple of nights and it’s been nice to have company.’

Lisa rotated the mug in her fingers. ‘Theo still in Bristol?’

‘Yes, as far as I know. Four months now, feels like a lifetime and yet no time at all. When we talk it’s awkward.’ She paused. ‘I hate how quickly he’s come to feel like a stranger.’

‘I’m still hoping you guys can figure it all out. You’re good together.’

Anna nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘So, birthing partner, eh? That’s a big responsibility.’ Lisa clearly wanted to steer the conversation onto a safer topic. ‘Does Shania not have a bloke?’

‘No. Apparently he was too nice, too boring.’

‘Bastard.’

‘That’s what I said.’ Anna watched, amused, as Lisa carefully positioned the coaster and placed the mug on it. ‘Don’t worry, Lis, just put the mug on the tabletop, it’s fine.’

‘I always feel a bit nervous here, like I’m going to break something or spill something! This really is some house,’ Lisa whispered, raising her shoulders and smiling, as if they were there illicitly and she was wary of being heard.

Anna knew exactly what she meant. Since Theo had fled to Bristol, she felt like a lodger. In his absence, she woke to a sense of unease in her gut, as if she might be accused of trespassing in this posh house by the posh people who lived either side. Mirabelles and Felicitys.

‘I would hate you not to be able to relax. If stuff gets broken or spilt, no one will care but you.’

‘Kaylee would love to have the run of a place like this – so much space!’

Anna smiled to hide the sadness that she would never get to hear the thunder of feet up and down the stairs or answer the door to her child’s friends. ‘Anyway, having a big house is not all good, there’s so much to clean! It’s a full-time job.’ She pulled a face, trying to make light of her very good fortune.

‘You’ve got a cleaner, right?’

‘Yes.’ She felt her face colour with the familiar guilt, trying to imagine what her mum would make of her handing over cash to another woman to clean her house. ‘You could bring your mum here, you know,’ Anna said. ‘I need to try and build a bridge with her – it would make everything easier.’

Lisa sighed. ‘It would, but I think Micky is the key to that, she pretty much follows his lead.’

‘I can see that.’

‘I was sorry to hear about Theo’s dad – was it expected?’ Lisa cocked her head to one side as she waited to hear what Anna had to say. Anna smiled to herself: she did the same thing when she was listening and she wondered if this was something they’d both inherited from their dad.

‘No, it wasn’t expected, but I suppose it never is, is it? Death. Even when people are ill, their passing still comes as a shock. His mum is obviously upset, though she still manages to make it all about her. I’ve taken her over soup that was too thin and soda bread that was too salty.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘I saw Theo at the wake, the first time since he left.’ She paused, the pain in her chest just as acute as it had been at the actual sight of him, no matter that she’d known he would be there.

‘That must have been difficult.’

‘It was.’ She nodded. ‘It was weird, there were moments of ordinariness, as though we’d forgotten what had gone on and were just our normal selves, and there were moments of pure sadness when I wanted to wrap him in my arms and tell him it was all going to be okay. But I couldn’t – there was this barrier.’

Lisa grimaced. ‘That’s sad.’

‘Yep, and, interestingly, when I took her soup over—’

‘Would that be the thin soup?’

‘The very same.’

They both laughed.

‘Stella told me that Theo had taken the business card of a therapist her friend had recommended.’

‘Can you see Theo doing therapy?’ Lisa sipped her tea and, despite her sister’s reassurance, reached for the coaster.

‘I don’t know. He’s so reluctant to open up about things that have affected him. He talks to his bestie, Spud, but as far as I know not about anything that really bothers him. It’s such a shame, I just know that if he did, he’d really get something out of it.’

‘You still want the best for him?’

Anna nodded. ‘I do. I am hurt about Sophie, of course...’ Saying her name had become a little easier. ‘But I love him.’

‘I know you do, darlin’.’ Lisa smiled at her.

‘But that doesn’t mean I can forgive him or live with him. Love isn’t always enough.’

‘Tell me about it. I mean, I love Kaylee’s dad. The knob.’

‘Things still not good?’

Lisa winced. ‘I know he’s been seeing his ex and where does that leave me? Hardly the best grounds for getting back together. I think I’m better off without him – you know what they say, once a cheater, always a cheater.’

‘I guess.’ She nodded, thinking of how their dad had cheated with her mum...

Lisa’s phone buzzed in her handbag and she reached inside, pulled it out and answered.

Anna could make out the angry burble of the man on the other end, if not the actual words. He was clearly shouting.

Lisa glanced up at Anna and spoke into her mobile. ‘I know that, Micky.’ She sighed. ‘And I will be out when I have finished my cup of tea. Jesus, can you just give us five minutes!’

She ended the call and shook her head. ‘Sorry, Anna, he’s arrived early to pick me up and you know what he’s like.’

‘Actually, I don’t know what he’s like. He doesn’t talk to me, remember?’

Lisa ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I hate how you two are so far apart. I’ve had enough, I really have. I mean, for the love of God, we have so few people in our lives, we could all do with being a bit closer, and it’s hard for Kaylee, it’s her birthday in the summer and all she wants is her family in the same room with a bit of cake and a bloody balloon or two, but that’s too much to ask of Micky and it’s bloody selfish! It would be so great if we could all just be civil without me feeling pulled every time I want to see you.’

It was a lightbulb moment for Anna. She stood up and grabbed her handbag. ‘Come on, Lis, finish your tea. We’re going out.’

‘Where are we going?’ Lisa stood, swigging the last of her drink before placing the mug carefully on the coaster once more.

Anna ignored her. Calling Griff inside, she shut him in the kitchen and marched across the hallway with Lisa following. She slammed the front door behind her and strode towards the purring black taxi cab that sat outside her house. Micky, who was leaning his elbow on the open window, did a double-take then stared straight ahead, avoiding her gaze.

Anna walked round and tried the passenger door.

‘It’s locked!’ He shook his head.

She banged the window. ‘Then open it!’

‘Not for you, no.’

Anna laughed. ‘For the love of God, have you heard yourself, Micky? You’re behaving like a child.’

‘I can behave however I want, it’s got nothing to do with you,’ he snarled.

‘Actually, it has, because it upsets my sister.’ She met his glare.

‘She’s been my sister for a lot longer than she has yours, so don’t start with that!’

‘Actually, she’s been my sister for my whole life, thirty-one years. The fact that I didn’t know about her is another thing.’

‘You think you’re something special—’

‘No, Micky!’ She interrupted him with her shout as she ran round to his window and continued to yell at him face to face. ‘That’s where you’re wrong. I do not think I’m something special and I never have! And I’m sick of the way you treat me! It’s bloody ridiculous and I’m not going to take it any more!’

‘Good, fuck off then and leave us alone!’ He jerked his head towards the driveway.

‘Oh, you’d like that, but here’s the thing, pal, I’m not going anywhere! And what does your fiancée, Tina, think of your weird obsession with me? Doesn’t she tell you to get over it, because that’s what I would say to Theo, I’d find it so stupid!’

‘I don’t give a shit what you think!’

‘Ah, but you clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t try so hard to be so foul to me!’

‘What’s going on?’ Lisa called, standing on the pavement in a state of confusion.

‘I’m trying to talk to Micky, but he’s locked the passenger door and won’t let me in, so we’re doing it this way, through the bloody window!’ She sighed her frustration. ‘You’re right, Lisa, enough is enough.’

‘I don’t know why you bother with her, Lis,’ Micky called to his sister.

Lisa looked at her feet, visibly torn.

Micky continued. ‘You might have forgotten what it was like for Mum, but I haven’t!’ He curled his lip at Anna once again.

‘What was it like for her?’ Anna stared at him defiantly. ‘Go on, tell me!’ she shouted, slapping the door with her hand.

Micky took a deep breath and began. ‘You have no idea!’

‘Try me.’

He looked at her with the familiar snarl to his top lip and took a second or two to phrase his thoughts. ‘I’d see her pacing between the lounge and the kitchen waiting for him to come home, smoking and crying and smiling at me, trying to make out everything was okay, and if I asked, “Where’s Dad?” she’d just break down again, and I was only small, I couldn’t do anything about it.’

Anna felt a surge of pity for the angry child who’d grown into an angry man.

‘And all the time he was carrying on with your mum.’

‘But that’s not my fault, Micky! I understand you’re mad about it, hurt, but you can’t take it out on me, I wasn’t even born!’

‘Who else can I take it out on?’ he said angrily.

‘God, why do you need to take it out on anyone? Why do you think it’s okay to kick me when you’re angry? How is it I have become that person?’

‘Because it was hard enough knowing that he was doing the dirty on my mum, and then to be grieving when he died and to find out about you! Jesus Christ, have you any idea what that was like?’

‘No, I haven’t, because you don’t tell me, because you don’t talk to me. But, you know, the person this really hurts is Lisa.’ She pointed over her shoulder. ‘And that’s not fair because she’s the best, she showed me kindness when it was in very short supply and she made me welcome, she became my family!’

‘Oh yes, and don’t we know it! That’s another thing, swanning in and buying your way into Kaylee’s life with your fancy bloody presents and Gap clothes and God knows what before scurrying back to your fancy house and your millionaire old man.’

‘Micky!’ Lisa shouted at her brother from the pavement. ‘Don’t say that!’

‘Why not? It’s what Mum and I think. Just like her mother, who lived all hoity-toity up at Honor Oak Park, shagging Dad while our mum cried her eyes out and marched a bloody hole in the carpet! I used to picture you sitting in a castle eating sweets while we sat and waited for him.’

‘Right.’ Anna felt the rise and fall of anger in her chest. She tried the back door of the cab and when it opened she jumped in. ‘Come on, Lisa!’ she called to her sister, who trotted over and hopped in beside her.

‘Get out of my cab!’ Micky shouted, baring his teeth at her through the plastic divide between the front and back seats.

‘No, Lisa and I need a cab and you are here so you might as well take us.’

‘Get out of my fucking cab!’

‘No!’

‘Please, Micky,’ Lisa pleaded tearfully.

At the sight of her distress, he seemed to calm a little. ‘Where do you need to go? I thought we were going home?’

‘Tell him to take us to Honor Oak Park.’

‘Can you take us to Honor Oak Park?’ Lisa repeated her words in a rather farcical manner.

To Anna’s surprise, Micky slowly pivoted back round, released the handbrake and pulled away from the kerb.

She held Lisa’s hand briefly and gave her a knowing look. Micky steered the cab eastwards, skirting Wandsworth and Battersea, through a light traffic jam in Clapham and across the common, and on to leafy Dulwich, where grand properties lined the roads. Micky sneered at her in the rearview mirror and she looked away, holding her nerve. Eventually they reached Honor Oak Park.

She hadn’t expected the punch to the chest as she saw the station entrance through which she and her mum had passed a thousand times, hand in hand, either setting off on an adventure or coming home from one. Micky stopped at the crossing to let several pedestrians pass. Anna looked at the wall to the left and remembered crouching against the bricks, a tense expression on her mum’s face as she placed her finger on her lips. ‘Stay here for a second or two... It’s a game! Like statues. How still and quiet can you be?’

‘You okay?’

Lisa’s question drew her back to the now. ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ She smiled weakly. Sitting forward, she tapped on the glass. ‘Can you pull over, please?’

Micky did as he was asked.

Anna jumped out and walked round to the driver’s door. ‘Can you get out of the cab, Micky?’

‘Do it, Micky, please,’ Lisa, now standing by her side, added.

Micky snorted his displeasure before ratcheting the handbrake and climbing from the driver’s seat. He left his hazard lights on and followed Anna across the road. ‘Where the bloody hell are we going?’ he snapped.

Anna ignored the question and headed down the road, past the old betting shop, a new coffee shop and the convenience store that had changed its name, before coming to a halt outside a rather rundown house. Rubbish was piled in the tiny front yard where once neat bins had been lined up in a row, ready for the weekly collection. She ran her hand over the low, crumbling concrete wall. Her stomach flipped and her heart beat fast as she pictured Joe resting her Snoopy school bag on it while he rummaged inside for a key. ‘Do you have a key, Anna? Anna Bee, do you have a key?’

‘This is our castle, Micky! This is where my hoity-toity mum lived. Not the whole house, just the ground-floor flat.’ She pointed at the bay window, glad that the curtains were drawn and she couldn’t see into the room that had been both her mum’s pride and joy and her brother’s prison. ‘She bought me and my brother meat, but she ate toast and jam because it was all she could afford. Which suggests she wasn’t being supported by anyone. I’m sure no money came out of your pocket, nor food out of your mouth. The kitchen was tiny and gloomy, but she still grew things, lemons in a pot, and a massive cheese plant in the corner of her bedroom. She never had any help. Her parents threw her out, pretty much, when she fell in love with a junkie and moved away, and then she had my brother Joe. And I loved him.’ Her voice broke. ‘I loved him more than anything in the world. He was wonderful. My mum died when I was nine and they carried her out of that very door.’ She pointed, her voice reedy. ‘And Joe looked after me as best he could, but he was an addict and I usually went to bed hungry and a bit scared. Joe was a petty thief and he jumped off the top of the car park in Bromley when I was thirteen and that’s pretty much when I went into care. And it was horrible, most of the time.’

Micky looked down at the ground, as if he was a little ashamed, or at least touched by her story. Lisa blew her nose.

‘So don’t you tell me about a hoity-toity life, a life of privilege. My mum would have been in awe of your three-bed semi with a kitchen door out to the back garden. She fell in love with your dad and I believe he fell in love with her and I can only imagine how shit that must feel, but it happened and now they’re dead! All of them, Micky, they’re all dead! And there is fuck all I can do about any of it and I’m damned if I’m going to let you treat me like a piece of shit because of a mistake your dad made or a choice my mum made. Got it?’

Micky took a deep breath, looked the house up and down, then turned and walked slowly back to the taxi. Lisa stepped forward and held her in a warm hug before planting a kiss on her cheek.

The traffic had increased and progress back west was slow. The three sat in silence, each mulling over the afternoon’s events, but despite the revelations, the atmosphere felt a little lighter. The cab crept towards Wandsworth, when Micky indicated and pulled over. He jumped out and opened the back door.

‘Come on.’ He ushered Anna and Lisa out from the back seat and walked briskly ahead.

Anna looked at Lisa, who shrugged. They followed him into a greasy spoon that was packed with taxi drivers, all sipping drinks from Styrofoam cups and taking large bites from bacon sandwiches served on grease-smudged paper plates.

‘All right, Micky?’ a stout woman called from behind the counter. ‘What can I get you, love?’

‘Three teas and a plate of biscuits, please, Dee.’

‘Coming right up. Ooh, bringing guests, are we?’ She nodded over in Anna’s direction.

‘Not guests, no. These are my little sisters, Lisa and Anna.’

Lisa threaded her arm through Anna’s. Anna’s heart was fit to burst.

‘Oh, how lovely!’ Dee smiled. ‘Pretty!’ She winked. ‘Not like you, you ugly mug.’

Micky grinned at them both. ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘They take after our dad.’

Anna felt happiness dancing on her shoulders. She remembered Jordan’s advice, given years ago. ‘I worry, Anna, that if you don’t find your voice, someone else will always speak for you, and then you won’t ever change their opinion or let them know the true you and that would be a tragic waste. You have a lot of good things to say.’

Yes, I do, Jord. Yes, I do.

*

Back home in Barnes that evening, her heart was still singing with the pleasure of having made up with Micky. She decided to call Jordan in New York and fill him in. So many of their phone calls over the last few months had been sad ones, with her either ranting about Theo or sobbing about how much she missed him. It was nice to have some happy news.

Jordan, as predicted, was thrilled for her, though Anna still couldn’t quite picture him and Micky going for a pint together. Equally predictably, the conversation then moved on to familiar territory.

‘You know, Anna...’ Jordan began.

Anna held the phone close to her face and tucked her hair behind her ears. The line was a little crackly with a delay.

‘It’s been, what, three or four months now? Do you not think Theo’s sweated enough? Isn’t it time you tried to sort it out? He’s your guy, remember. Look how it’s gone with Micky, you finding your voice, making things better. Can’t you—’

‘Jordan, it’s not that straightforward! This isn’t a kiss-and-make-up thing. He kept such a huge secret from me, he deceived me, for all that time. He has a child, Jord! A little girl.’ She instantly regretted raising her voice. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t yell at you.’

‘You yell away, I’ll just ignore you and retune when you start making sense.’

That made her smile. ‘It’s so complicated.’

‘But here’s the thing.’ Jordan sighed. ‘It doesn’t need to be. There is nothing, nothing that Levi could do that would make me want to be away from him – nothing. And so we would always find a way to work things out. And it’s either like that for you and you find a way or...’ He took a deep breath. ‘Or maybe it’s time to start over and tread your own path.’

Anna closed her eyes. ‘It’s not that easy, Jord. As you said yourself, I love him unconditionally and that’s the problem. He’s the one! He’s the one I want to be married to. But I don’t know how to get over this, I don’t know how to move things on.’

‘He’s not as strong as you, Anna. I’m so proud of how you did that thing with Micky, but Theo’s more fragile. He’s been weak, that’s for sure, but is that such a crime, all things considered? And if he’s going to therapy that should help him with his depression, if that’s what’s going on with him. And therapy must work otherwise every single New Yorker I have ever met wouldn’t bother with it, but they do!’

She gave a wry smile. ‘But what if nothing changes?’

‘Then you pack a very large bag, get your cocktail-drinking head on and jump on the first plane over the pond, where I will show you my gangshow medal and Levi and I will make you dance so hard you’ll forget why you were ever blue.’

‘That’d have to be some dance.’

‘Toots, you haven’t seen us in action!’

‘Thank you. I love you, Jordan. I love you so much.’ Her heart brimmed with affection for the man who had made a difference to her life since she was thirteen.

‘You get it all back, now stop with the niceness, you’ve made my mascara run!’