‘Just for today,’ Dad said. ‘Forget everything else. Just let today be perfect.’

So we did. We forgot that at fifteen I was really too old for a birthday picnic that had become a family tradition when I was three. We forgot that the weather forecast had said light to moderate showers and a strong breeze were likely in the southeast by mid-afternoon. We forgot that society may or may not have been collapsing around us. Dad cast a spell, we allowed ourselves to fall under it. And my birthday was perfect.

He invited the same old family friends every year and, when I was a kid, half my classmates. Now the only schoolfriends to make the invite list were Mischa and Danny, my oldest friends. Most years the picnic wasn’t perfect, not quite. There’d be arguments. Or a kid went missing, or was sick, or injured themselves. Or the weather was wrong, because despite humanity’s best efforts to set the planet on fire, somehow London on a holiday weekend in May is often rainy, or the wind turns out to be colder than you expected, and everyone has to try to pretend they’re not wishing they’d worn at least one sweater.

This day was magical. The sun shone in defiance of the forecast, and we stretched ourselves out like cats, lazy and happy in its warmth. We ate iced gems and cocktail sausages on sticks and a squashed chocolate cake I’d watched being carefully covered in Smarties by Billie in our kitchen that morning, acting like I didn’t notice she was eating half of them.

Mischa sneaked paper cups of wine for us while Dad and his friends were too busy dozing or having boring conversations to notice, and Danny played football and rounders with Billie and the other little kids, organizing them into teams, cheering them on, resolving their arguments, until their shadows grew long. I felt a pang of happiness watching him and I knew Mischa did too. She’d never have admitted it but she’d worried like I had that he was drifting away from us, that everything was changing. It was a relief to see the old Danny, like he always had been. It was right. Everything was right.

Claudia almost broke the spell. She arrived at the picnic very late, and there was a forced brightness about her, a kind of distracted sadness when she thought no one was looking. She laughed and said she was just tired but it was obviously more than that. Dad put his arm round her, looked concerned.

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Something at work,’ she said. ‘Boring. Now let’s enjoy this bloody picnic. Have you lot left me any booze?’ There was plenty left for Claudia despite Mischa having placed herself strategically next to whichever bottle had just been opened.

Billie spotted her and waved.

‘Mum! You missed my goal!’

She turned away to chase after the ball, but Claudia kept watching her with an expression that didn’t belong at my perfect, sunlit birthday. I felt a pinprick of irritation. Why did she always have to worry? What happened to you when you were a grown-up that made you serious all the time, just under the surface, even when you were supposed to be having fun? Nothing could really be wrong on this enchanted, golden day.

Eventually people started to drift off, slow and reluctant. I feel now like we sensed what was coming and that was why no one wanted to leave. But probably it was just the sun and the wine. Dad and Claudia packed up and persuaded Billie and her friends it was time to go home, their howls of protest quietened by encouragement from Danny and promises of popcorn and a movie from Dad. Billie didn’t want to leave me and hung on to my hand till I promised I’d see her at home later and tell her a story.

It was early evening, no curfew patrols out yet. Mischa and Danny and I wandered down to the boating lake and sat and talked till the sky turned orange and pink in front of us, deepening blue above. We argued about whether the first star was really a plane but made a wish on it anyway. Star light, star bright. I wished that… I don’t know. What was it that I wished for, back then? When I was a little kid it was that Mum would come back or even that she had never left in the first place. By fifteen I knew there was no point wishing for the impossible. But I can’t imagine now – that day, my birthday, with my friends there with me, my home round the corner, my family waiting for me, what could I possibly have wished for?

‘I’ve got to go,’ Danny said suddenly, awkward. ‘My dad needs me to…’

Something. I don’t remember what. He always was a bad liar. He goes red under his freckles and looks at the floor, has done ever since he was a little kid in trouble with a teacher.

But our spell was too strong for even that to break it. We wouldn’t let it.

‘Just you and me then, babe,’ Mischa said as we watched him disappear. ‘Like it should be, right?’

She pulled a bottle half-full of warm wine out of her bag like she was pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and I got the giggles and laughed so hard it made my belly hurt and I had to lie down, so Mischa lay down too and we propped ourselves up on our elbows and drank the wine. We invented backstories for all the people who walked past and wondered what it would be like to be them and laughed some more because everything was funny and because we were so happy not to be any one else but us.

And then we walked home through the dusty London summer streets, arm in arm, sun-dazed, wine-dizzy, singing loudly and out of tune as the first drops of the light to moderate showers fell. We turned our faces up to the sky and the thick summer smell of rain on warm pavements rose around us and Mischa held her arms out and grabbed my hand as thunder rumbled.

As we spun and whooped and splashed our way home, I told myself I would never forget, not even when I’m ninety years old, what it feels like to be fifteen and right on the edge of everything exciting and real, and have the best friend in the world, and to walk together in a summer rainstorm through the streets we grew up in.

That’s how I remember it.

Mischa told me once that when you’re remembering something you’re actually just remembering the last time you remembered it. So it’s like a whispered message passed along a line. Who knows how close the end result is to how it started out? You get things wrong and cut things out and add things without even realizing, and over time the tiny changes get bigger. So all memories are stories really. Based on real events, like they say about movies.

But whatever. That’s how I remember it.

My fifteenth birthday was the last perfect day.

   
STORY

Shortening of Latin historia meaning ‘history, inquiry, account, narrative, story’. An account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment. A description, either true or imagined, of a connected series of events. A particular person’s representation of the facts of a matter. A lie.

The woman doesn’t notice the girl at first, though her outside café table is only a few feet away from where the girl is standing. Dusk is falling and the woman is cold, despite the canopy hung with fairy lights and the heaters. She tries in vain to attract the waiter’s attention and watches with irritation as he hurries instead to a much younger woman with sleek blonde hair just behind her.

When you’re used to being seen you can’t imagine being invisible, the woman thinks, and looks away, out to the square where tourists and Christmas shoppers are getting in the way of those heading home from work.

And now she notices the girl hovering nearby, lank-haired, an unwashed look about her clothes, her limbs too thin inside them.

The woman stiffens. There have always been beggars in Edinburgh of course, as there are in all big cities. Like overpriced coffee, it’s an inconvenience she accepts as part of city life. But there are more and more of them every day now: mothers, children, old men – hands held out to people like her, sitting in cafés and restaurants with their lipstick-marked coffee cups, empty wine glasses, remains of abandoned meals on their plates. She is resentful of the prickle of guilt she feels. These people ought to leave us in peace, she tells herself. We’re doing no harm. We’re luckier than they are. That doesn’t make us bad people, does it?

This girl doesn’t hold out her hand though. She watches. The woman watches back and is reminded unexpectedly of her own daughter, of a book they used to read together at bedtime. There was one story in particular Anna would ask her to read over and over, even though it made her cry. ‘The Little Match Girl’, about a child who saw comforting visions in the light of the matches she lit as she froze on the streets. The woman had never liked it herself. Children’s stories ought not to have sad endings. She had changed the ending until Anna was old enough to decipher the words herself. Was the little match girl an angel in that last picture? No! She had simply grown wings and flown away. The poor girl, Anna had said with tears in her eyes when she finally pieced the real story together, her fingers stroking the picture of the frozen little match seller. It’s not fair. She’d say the same now, no doubt, if she was here.

‘Are you all right?’ the woman finds herself calling out to the girl. She feels the couple at the next table turn to stare at her with surprise that echoes her own.

The girl moves closer. The woman instinctively leans back in her chair, already regretting speaking to her.

‘He came here,’ the girl says.

The woman, who is never unnerved, is unnerved. By the girl; by herself. She smiles at the girl in the brisk, dismissive way she always smiles at people when she wants them to go away. But the girl doesn’t notice. She barely seems to look at her at all.

‘Grandpa. He came here.’

‘Your grandfather?’ The woman looks around for him. ‘Here?’

‘Not now,’ the girl says. ‘Before.’

The woman says nothing. She shouldn’t have spoken to the girl. She is missing Anna, that’s all. Not a good reason to strike up conversation with beggar girls, especially ones who talk in unsettling riddles instead of just asking for money and going away when you don’t give it to them.

‘With my granny,’ the girl who isn’t Anna says. ‘This is their place.’

Her eyes are glassy, her face a little flushed. She has a fever, the woman thinks. She isn’t well. When Anna was ill as a child, she would make her chicken soup.

‘Is anyone with you? Family?’

‘My sister.’

‘Your parents…?’

The girl shakes her head. ‘Just us.’

‘No one to take care of you? You don’t look well.’

The girl doesn’t seem to be listening now, or rather she seems to be listening to something the woman can’t hear.

‘Where do you sleep?’ the woman persists, not knowing why. She knows about the camps that grow up like weeds in the grey, unloved cracks in the city. Small, tented towns, ripped down by the police from time to time only to bloom again somewhere else.

‘Psshht,’ a waiter says loudly, flicking a cloth at the girl as if he’s scaring off a mangy pigeon pecking at leftover crumbs. ‘No begging here. Go!’ He gestures dismissively to her.

‘Fucking cockroaches,’ he mutters as he turns away and the woman flinches despite herself. The waiter is young, not much older than the girl who isn’t Anna. His face is handsome and – the woman had thought – kind.

And now the girl has turned and is walking away. The woman wants to call after her but doesn’t know what to say, what to tell her that would help. Her sister would know. But the thought of asking Polly for help… Anyway, they’re so different these days.

She feels panic – why? – as the girl gets further from her. She remembers the picture of the little match girl flying off to heaven, and it seems to her for a moment that as she walks away the girl begins to float. She imagines she sees wings unfurling from the thin, dirty coat the girl is wearing, not warm enough for the Edinburgh winter.

But Clem does not fly.

Instead, she sways and drops to the pavement. The woman runs to her.

‘Hey,’ the waiter calls. ‘Your bill!’ Now he pays her attention.

‘Are you okay? Can you hear me?’ The girl’s eyelids flutter. ‘Stay awake, little match girl,’ the woman mutters as she reaches for her phone. ‘Polly?’ she says, trying to sound businesslike. ‘It’s me… Yes, yes, I’m fine. Look, there’s a girl. You need to help her. I’m with her now. She was begging and… I think she’s ill. Or maybe just hungry, I don’t know. No parents, she says, just a sister—’

The woman scans the street in the direction the girl had been walking, trying to spot the sister. As she does, she listens to her own sister’s voice, sighs, rolls her eyes. Saint Polly, self-righteous as always. She bites back her irritation and listens, absently stroking the hair of the girl as if she were a much younger child.

‘Yes… yes,’ she says eventually. ‘I know all that. And I know they all need help, but I’m with this one now, and she’s ill, and—’ And what? Anna. Chicken soup. The little match girl. She can’t say any of this. ‘… And if I leave her, I don’t know what will happen to her,’ she says instead. It is all she can say. It should be enough.

She holds the girl’s hand. Don’t let go.

She hopes it is enough.

‘So, Clem. Let’s start at the beginning. How long is it since you left London?’

The woman has a kind face, but behind it she’s professional, watching me closely as we talk in a cramped office on the second floor, with big windows looking out over an enclosed courtyard. Outside, some of the younger kids are being led out to play. I can’t see Billie but she’s probably at the back, still putting on her coat and chatting, chatting, as always. Have they given her a scarf to wear, gloves? The wind is bitter today. A memory comes from nowhere, of Billie’s gloves with the animals on the fingers. They never got packed. Are they still at home, stuffed into the pockets of her school duffle coat along with a couple of conkers, a pebble, sweet wrappers? Is the coat still hanging on a hook in the hall, in the silence and shadows, dust collecting unseen in its folds?

Some nights when I can’t sleep, I imagine walking round our house, filled with all the lost everyday things that got left behind, a museum of us. Through the red-painted front door, tripping over Billie’s school shoes abandoned in the hallway… into the sitting room, where I’m sprawled on the sofa watching TV, to the kitchen where Dad’s cooking pasta, a large glass of red wine in hand, Claudia sitting at the breakfast bar with her laptop, telling him about work… the garden where Billie’s on the swing singing made-up nonsense songs about invisible elephants or magical hats. Sometimes I imagine the ghosts of us are still there, living our old lives. Other times I wonder if I’m the ghost and the real me got left behind and I dig my nails into the skin of my arms, to check there’s blood inside me, to make sure that I can feel it.

I drag my focus back to the woman talking to me. I don’t remember exactly who she is, though I think she must have told me. Someone from the charity, but whether she’s some kind of counsellor or just another person filling in more forms I don’t know. Did she tell me? It’s all been a blur since we arrived here. No, that’s not right. Things seem very clear as they happen, too clear somehow, too loud and bright. But they don’t seem to sink in, so nothing joins together. Like those toys – Billie had one at home, a kind of spinning top with slits in the side and strips of pictures that you put inside. What was it called? When you watched through the little windows the pictures merged and seemed to be moving, clowns juggling and acrobats tumbling. But when you slowed it down to a standstill you could see that really each image was clear and complete on its own. It didn’t join on to anything else, it didn’t move or make sense.

‘Clem?’ She looks at me, silent, waiting.

‘Sorry?’ She must think I’m stupid.

Nah, Mischa says in my head. She just thinks you’re insane. I mean, that must be why they sent you to see her, right?

‘How long is it since you left your home?’ the woman says gently.

I count backwards, trying to piece it all together. It seems impossible to measure everything that’s happened in days, weeks, months, as if it’s something that could be contained in the squares on a calendar. What’s happened to us feels outside of time, too big for it. Time is different now. There is now and before, but they don’t always go in the order they should, they muddle together, and I forget which one I’m in. Perhaps there will be an after, but I can’t imagine it.

‘I’m not sure exactly. Months.’

Polly – that was her name, I remember now – is waiting to see if I’ll say anything more, still watching me closely. I decide Mischa’s right: she’s definitely some kind of shrink. I remember them from when I was a kid, after Mum left and everyone was worried about me, leaving gaps to see if I’d fill them. Now I concentrate on smoothing the dog-eared corners of the notebook in my lap. It’s hard not to speak when someone’s waiting for you to say something, but I guess I got pretty good at it back then. Focus on something else, have an imaginary conversation in your head. It turns out I’ve still got the knack.

‘And you’re sixteen years old?’

‘Yes.’

She checks a form and some notes. I wonder what’s written in them.

‘There are no adults here with you?’

‘No.’

‘At home you lived with your father and stepmother?’

She must know this already. I’ve told at least three other people this stuff: a form-filler, someone medical, a bored-looking man in a dandruff-flecked suit.

‘And Billie.’

‘Billie…’ she prompts gently. ‘She’s your half-sister?’

Usually when people ask this it’s in a tone of disbelief. We couldn’t be more different. Me, lanky and skinny, kind of clumsy-looking, mousy hair and skin so pale I’m practically translucent, needing several months of sun before I stop being the colour of skimmed milk; Billie, stocky and fizzing with energy and ideas, a mini-Claudia with the same heart-shaped face, dark-brown skin and determined look. Only her smile is Dad’s, wide and mischievous. Mine is my mum’s apparently, though I can’t remember her smiling much.

‘Billie’s not half anything,’ I tell Polly.

She looks at me, questioning.

‘It’s what my dad said. When I was younger, I always thought when people called us half-sisters it made it sound like we only belonged to each other half as much as “real” sisters. I always wanted to say, Don’t call her that. She’s my sister. When I said that to Dad he laughed. He said, Course she is. Billie never does anything by halves. Because she’s so… Billie. You can’t ignore her, you know?’ I want to go to the window now, to see what she’s doing out in the garden, but it might seem rude. And now I can feel the panicky feeling rising again and Polly is speaking but I can’t hear her because there’s a roaring sound in my ears and my heart is pounding so hard I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe—

‘Clem?’

Polly’s hand on my arm. ‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘Breathe with me. In… and now out. In…’

Eventually the fading room comes back into focus.

‘That’s it,’ Polly says. ‘You’re okay, Clem. You’re safe.’

She walks to the water cooler and fills a cup for me and one for herself, putting them down on the table between us. Her nails are painted a glittery dark green, just like Mischa used to wear sometimes, and I want to tell her I like it, that my best friend used to wear nail varnish just the same colour, maybe the same brand even, and that I miss her so much. And I want to explain how I miss wearing nail varnish, which I know seems kind of silly now what with everything else there is to miss, but it was nice to care about what you looked like, right down to whether even your hands looked nice.

‘If you can,’ Polly says, ‘I think it would be really helpful for you to tell me, in your own words, how you came to be here. About why you had to leave home and what happened after you did.’

The air of the room hums with my silence. From outside there are sounds of life, someone whistling in the corridor, a child – not Billie – laughing outside. Inside the room we are in a different world, a muffled place halfway between the living and the dead.

‘I know it’s not easy, to revisit difficult things, to share them,’ Polly says. ‘There’s no rush. We can take our time.’

I say nothing.

‘Do you think you can do that, Clem?’

She waits, her face kind, her blue eyes watching me closely.

Eventually she says, ‘I can see you’re tired. We can take this as slow as you like.’

She means it as reassurance, but all I hear is that however long it takes, I’ll eventually have to tell her everything.

‘You’re not feeling unwell again?’

I shake my head, picturing myself as she must see me, as I’d seen myself in the mirror of the communal bathroom this morning, a thin, hollow-eyed stranger. A ghost. Billie at my side, trying to talk and brush her teeth at the same time. I tap the table leg very gently with my toe, watching the vibrations shiver the water in my cup.

‘I think that’s enough for today,’ Polly says at last. ‘We’ll pick this up again next time, shall we?’

Thank God, I can go. I stand, ready to run for the door.

‘There’s a games night tonight,’ she says hopefully. ‘Board games, chess, that kind of thing. Come along if you like.’

‘Maybe,’ I say, knowing I won’t.

‘What’s the book?’ Polly asks, apparently casually but you never know with shrinks. Instinctively I hold it close to me as if she might try and grab it.

‘It’s just a notebook. Billie gave it to me. For my birthday.’

As I say the words, the pure, impossible happiness of that day flashes into my head. It feels like staring into the sun, too bright to look at for long. My grip tightens on the notebook, as if it contains that joy, as if it can take me back there.

‘You write in it? A diary?’

‘Stories,’ I say, feeling myself blush. ‘For Billie.’

‘Really?’ she says. ‘What a lovely idea. I’d love to read them sometime, if you’d let me?’

‘No.’ It’s out before I can stop it. I can hear the fury in my own voice.

Babe? imaginary Mischa says. I get it, okay, but ideally you need to not act crazy at the nice shrink lady. Otherwise you’ll have to keep coming to see her for ever. Just act normal, if you can remember how. Right?

Right. I catch my breath.

‘Clem?’ Polly says. ‘Are you okay? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. Of course, I totally understand that you want to keep what you write private. It’s personal to you.’

‘Not really. They’re just silly stories. Just fairy tales. Not even that really. My grandpa used to tell me all these myths and folk tales when I was a little kid. I loved them.’ I know I’m gabbling, trying to distract from that flash of anger, trying to cover it up, but I’m only making things worse. ‘I can only remember bits of them now. So I make up my own versions for Billie.’

I force myself to smile at Polly. She nods and smiles back, handing me a tissue, and it’s only then that I realize there are tears on my face.

I look out of the window as I leave, to wave at Billie, but it’s started to rain and the garden is empty.