Harrison had one more thing.

Maya had told him, in the second winter, about her brother.

His name was Theo.

He was three years younger.

Their parents had died in a house fire when Maya was nine and he was six, and there had been no relatives able to take two, and there had been a couple in the system who wanted a boy of six and could not manage a girl of nine with a stammer and a temper.

She had been told, at ten years old, standing in a corridor with a social worker’s hand on her shoulder, that this was going to be better for him.