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would have stopped her.
    At this point, I hope you are asking yourself who you would rather be: Lisette Ingrey or Allisande Ingrey. I would much rather be Allisande, because there is nothing more annoying than being bossed around by a parent who thinks they know best.
    If Sorrel and Bascom Ingrey hadn’t loved her as much as they did, Allisande might have felt neglected, but they did love her, and she knew it. So she was very happy to have so much more independence than most children. Lisette was also happy. She’d had a stimulating and interesting routine to follow since birth, and it was one that allowed her to do everything she wanted to do without worrying about when she was going to do it. There were no decisions to be made, so she could concentrate on enjoying all the activities in the boxes on Bascom’s chart without having to arrange them herself. Freedom was something she had never had, so she didn’t know she ought to want it. She had no desire to sort out her own life. And Allisande never felt the need to have a full schedule like Lisette’s. She liked making her own decisions far more than she would have liked any number of music lessons or gold stars for getting her homework in on time (Allisande never did her homework, always got in trouble, and didn’t care), and so she regularly decided to do as little as possible, and she never regretted her decision.
    If you’re waiting for me to tell you that the two sisters hated and resented each other, prepare to be disappointed. Each one was content with her lot in life, and neither one ever said, “Why aren’t I doing what she’s doing? Why is it different for me than it is for her?” Don’t forget, these two girls grew up in a home that could have been a museum of difference! They were used to seeing their father sitting at the dining-room table eating homemade roast beef with roast potatoes, carrots and peas, while their mother ate pears and wheels of camembert from a horizontal position on the sofa. Lisette and Allisande grew up seeing their parents do everything differently and never envying each other, and so they followed this example. Such was the brilliance of Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey’s strange parenting that each girl believed she had the far better deal ! Imagine that!
    The really strange and interesting thing is this: although they were brought up in completely opposite ways, Lisette and Allisande Ingrey were startlingly similar. They did not fill their days with the same activities, but their basic characters were like replicas of one another. They were both happy, polite, nice girls with relaxed temperaments, and everyone who met them liked them. And for years and years and years, they liked and loved each other. Even when trauma and horror struck their family, when their little sister Perrine killed poor, lovely Malachy Dodd, Lisette and Allisande remained close and the best of friends.
    It took the murder of Perrine herself to split them apart and tear their sisterly love to tatters.

2
    T here’s a text from Alex on my phone when my alarm goes off in the morning: “Soz I didn’t call yest. It’s mad my end. Talk later? A”
    Lying in our bed, my eyes not yet fully open, I send him a quick reply: “All fine here. Speak tonight. J xx.” I don’t have the energy for more at the moment, only for the easy white lie: all fine . Will Alex continue to believe that even after he’s heard everything I need to tell him?
    Which is what, exactly? Ellen’s too wrapped up in herself? She wrote a story with a family tree in it, and the characters’ names were strange? So what?
    Nothing is quite significant enough in itself; I have nothing concrete to point to. All my instincts tell me something is wrong and has been since . . . No, not since the day we moved here. My reaction to seeing 8 Panama Row was an aberration. Our first month in Speedwell House was idyllic. Then . . .
    Then what?
    Something happened, and it changed everything. To Ellen