He was painting the front gate as I drew up; I waved, but he was striding away.

My heart was screaming…it’s me, dad, remember?

Following him up the path, past the familiar flowerpots spilling their color, I felt my blood freeze.

“What’s she doing here?”

“I’ve no idea.”…My sister’s voice now…raw with anger, like my dad’s.

“I didn’t ask her to come”

He turned to face me, eyes glazed with his all-consuming loss.

“Get out of my house.”

Listening to the same words, so many years on, I felt the same crushing rejection.

But this time I was pleading. “I was just a kid, dad. It was an accident.”

He was deathly pale now, veins rippling in his neck. “It was no accident. Do ye hear?

No accident.”

The door crashed behind him, and Kelly and I stood staring at each other.

“I should go,” I said, my voice shaking.

She turned away from me to stare through the window, at the hunched figure pacing the front lawn.

Watching her, I was seized by the old familiar jealousy.

The day she was born, seven years after me, I knew we’d have nothing in common. Kelly was blonde and gorgeous and feisty, and from the minute her father picked her up she was daddy’s girl. Everybody said so. I was the shy, gawky, seven-year-old, living inside books.

She turned from the window, her voice cool. “Get your bags, I’ll put the kettle on.”

“C’mon Kelly, you heard what dad said. Any way, I’ve fixed it to stay with auntie Jill.”

I watched her full, well-shaped mouth, purse up. “She won’t want visitors at her age”

“I’m hardly a visitor, remember?”

She inspected her well-groomed nails. “Whose fault is that, Trish? You must know how dad feels about that day.”

“I was twelve-years-old, Kelly. Sending me away was so cruel.”

She stared at me, large cornflower eyes hardening. “It hasn’t done you any harm. Mega salary, posh car”

I could have reminded her it was dad who’d found the money for her first beauty salon. Anything for a quiet life, even now, I decided, leaving her to her party lists.

Getting in the car, something made me head for Walter Park, as if I needed ghosts. I was beginning to wonder why I’d let Auntie Jill talk me into coming back home at all.