She went to her grandmother’s funeral and read a poem by Tennyson in a quiet voice no one could really hear. She cut her hair short and started going out with the boy she had been so smitten with when she was younger, but he couldn’t live up to her idea of him. She kept a small pile of printouts in her underwear drawer: Joanna at six, seven, eight, nine. Joanna at thirteen. She thought her sister looked exactly like she did, and for some reason this made her feel worse.

‘She’s dead.’ Deborah’s voice was flat, quite calm.

‘Have you come all this way to tell me that?’

‘I thought we owed each other at least that much, Richard. Let her go.’

‘You don’t know she’s dead. You’re just abandoning her.’

‘No.’

‘Because you’ve found a new husband and now …’ His glance at her pregnant belly was full of disgust. ‘Now you’re going to have another happy family.’

‘Richard.’

‘And forget all about her.’

‘That’s not fair. It’s been eight years. Life has to go on, for all of us.’

‘Life has to go on. Are you going to tell me that this is what Joanna would have wanted?’

‘Joanna was five when we lost her.’

‘When you lost her.’

Deborah stood up, thin legs on high heels and a round stomach pushing at her shirt. He could see her belly button. Her mouth was a thin, trembling line. ‘You bastard,’ she said.

‘And now you’re deserting her.’

‘You want me to destroy myself as well?’

‘Why not? Anything rather than life has to go on. But don’t worry. I’m still waiting.’

When Rosie went to university she called herself Rosalind Teale, taking her step-father’s name. She didn’t tell her father. She still loved him, though she was scared by his chaotic, unchanging grief. She didn’t want anyone to say: ‘Rosie Vine? Why does that ring a bell?’ Even though there was less and less chance of that. Joanna had melted into the past, was a wisp of memory now, a forgotten celebrity, a one-hit wonder. Sometimes, Rosie wondered if her sister was just a dream.