4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2018
Copyright © Rachel Edwards 2018
Cover image © Margie Hurwich/Arcangel Images
Design by Heike Schüssler
Rachel Edwards asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008281113
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008281137
Version: 2018-07-06
To Peter
and
Patricia, darling Mum
‘If you prick us, do we not bleed?’
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Contents
It took less than six months for everything to fall apart. Six months of fighting, competing, whispering, each of us trying to be better, to love him better.
I knew she was trouble from the moment I saw her. I felt it as she stood in our doorway that day: disaster. Not just because she was so different – that skin and that hair, as opposite to me as it’s possible to be. More than the way she always looked through me, right past me, straight at him. There was something wrong about her. Wrong for us. We would