My husband left his medication at home, so I stopped by his office to bring it to him. But when I asked the receptionist to call him downstairs, she said, "Ma'am, your husband has been on leave for the past week."

That is it. That is the entire offence.

She did not raise her voice. She did not say it in front of one single person. She did not say it unkindly and she did not say it again.

And I did not speak to my sister again for four years and two months.

Because she was right.

That is the whole reason and it took me four years and a corridor to be able to write it down. Not because she was cruel — she has never been cruel in her life and I have told four people otherwise since and all four of them knew I was lying.

I cut my sister off because she was the only person left alive who had watched what I did in those six weeks —

and who was going to go on existing. At Christmases. At funerals. In photographs. For the rest of my life.