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archaeological complications, and a strong community watching our every move.
    I am good at this, and I slip back into it easily and professionally. Despite my unexpectedly intimate conversation with Ellen this morning (which has left me feeling a little exposed, and which I regretted instantly), or perhaps because of it, I am determinedly friendly but distant with my new colleagues, many of whom are younger than me.
    I leave the office at six thirty, pleased with myself.
    Then I am cutting through Covent Garden, heading to my sister’s flat. She lives in a street that is jarringly perfect, if you like to live in the middle of a city. It is early in the evening, the sun is shining, and the streets are busy with released workers and tourists and students, as well as assorted unplaceable people. I feel the buzz in the air, and although I love Falmouth and Cornwall, I know in my heart that I am a Londoner. I am a Londoner, and I have arrived home, and even the fact that I am about to have to negotiate Olivia cannot dent the upsurge of happiness.
    For a second I picture myself in a book. It is a children’s picture book, and its name is Lara in London . I am drawn in a stylised way, like a woman in a classy little fashion tome from the thirties, with a nipped-in waist and a chignon, and I am striding confidently through the city having adventures. There is no particular rhythm to these adventures, because Lara in London is a guide to the city’s landmarks more than anything else. Right now, I am tapping, in my glorious shoes, around the edge of Covent Garden Market, past people determinedly shivering with beers at outside tables and a street entertainer juggling chairs on a red carpet, with a crowd gathered watching him. I wave to him as I pass, feeling so powerful in myself, all of a sudden, that I am sure I can make him wave back and ruin his act. He does not even see me, of course, but my mind instantly transforms him into his illustrated self, his stubble shaded in, his round cheeks exaggerated.
    Marks and Spencer, opposite the Tube, is my first destination. As I buy wine and olives and clotted cream that I will not even attempt to pretend I brought all the way from Cornwall, I tell myself that it will be all right. I tell myself so firmly that I feel I can make it true. Olivia said I could stay with her, during the week, indefinitely. She would not have said that if she was not planning to be nice.
    Unfortunately, she would have done exactly that, and I know that perfectly well. I have not seen my sister for a year and a half, because we went to Sam’s family last Christmas and by the time we got to my parents’ on December 28th, she had gone somewhere, ‘away with friends’.
    I squash my dread with internal platitudes. Since we have had a break from one another, it will probably be fine. A break was exactly what our relationship needed. We were never friends as children, or teenagers, and as young adults we fell out catastrophically: all this is undeniably true. She has no idea about the big event of my life, but then neither does my husband. We have never been friends, not even in the most shallow of ways. She was born hating me; I suppose I must have done something from those earliest of days to provoke that, but I never meant to. Her hatred has been unwavering and true, and she has behaved in a way that has left me no choice but to hate her back.
    I have always been sceptical of other people’s much-vaunted sisterly closeness; in fact, I cannot help suspecting that it is all a sham, that underneath every pair of loved-up sisters is some variant of Olivia and me, constantly nursing grievances that started to pile up on the day the second child was conceived.
    Now, however, we might be able to construct a new relationship. We are in our thirties, and we could make it work. There is a chance, I insist to myself as I put my debit card in the machine and ask for cashback, that this will happen. Perhaps I will soon be