My sister kissed my husband in front of thirty people at her own anniversary party and called it a joke. Her husband had a wrapped present in his hands and an envelope she had never opened.

She has been managing Romy for twenty-five years. Quietly, on her own, without telling anybody, including me. The girl who could not be left with other people’s husbands.

And she made a decision, at some point in about 2007, that she would rather hold on to both of us than be honest with either of us about it.

Which is a thing I would have found unforgivable at thirty-five and which, at thirty-eight, with a nine-year-old and a six-year-old of my own, I understand far better than I want to.

Romy.

She came to my house on the twenty-second of June, two weeks after.

She had a speech and she got about a third of the way through it.

The speech was that she had been unhappy, that Tobin was not affectionate, that the thing with Gethin was a mistake she had been trying to end, and that the business with Ellis had never meant anything and I had always known that.