I watched Laika’s face fall the moment the words were out of his mouth. Turning, she pushed past Deedee and my mother and stumbled into the house, wobbling unsteadily in the heels. I followed her. She pulled off the boots and threw them hard across the kitchen. One bounced off the utility door and she bolted upstairs.

“Oh, my girl,” my mother said.

“Stay here,” I said; “I’ll go.”

I raced up the stairs. Laika was in her room, tearing off the clothes and hurling them across the room, her cheeks burning with shame. I stood in the doorway, plucking at the fabric of the white dress.

“Don’t say anything,” she said, “don’t even speak to me.”

She was down to her bra and knickers, the little dolphin necklace swinging wildly at her throat. She pushed past me and into the bathroom we shared. At the sink she scrubbed at her face with soap until her cheeks were blood red and raw. I put out a hand and touched her arm.

“Lai.” She turned her streaked face to me, her cheeks slick with rivers of black mascara.

“It’s always me,” she said. “Don’t you get that? It’s never, ever you, never the Golden Girl. Even when we’re doing the exact same thing. It’s always me.” She turned back and scrubbed again at her face. “Like I would flirt with my own father? It’s sick.”

“I don’t think he meant it like that.” My words sounded weak, even to me, a lie.

She turned on me. “Who the fuck are you now, his pet monkey?” She stood up and glared at me, her entire body tense with fury, her eyes red from the soap. “I hate him.”

She pushed past me and stormed to her bedroom. Then she turned and stood in the doorway. Through gritted teeth she said, “You’re never going to understand. You do everything you’re told. You never question anything. You’re a puppet. Somebody pulls a string and your arm jerks up. Someone opens your mouth and you spew whatever they want you to say. You never stand up for me. You never stand up for you. Nothing matters to you. You haven’t got the guts to stand up for anything or anyone in your entire life, not ever. I hate the fucking lot of you.”

She slammed the door so hard it rattled in its frame. I stood by the door, frozen, holding my breath in case someone downstairs had heard.

***

Laika only came down the next day, silently materializing next to me in a T-shirt and shorts but otherwise looking like she’d just got out of bed, her hair still an unbrushed mess of wild dark curls. I put my arm around her shoulders and we stood in silence, gazing through the window. Some new neighbors, Graeme and Sheila Bowman, had come over to introduce themselves, and my parents were standing with them on the terrace, inspecting the pale yellow brick my father had chosen for the extension. Spotting the two of us through the kitchen window, my mother called us out to say hello.

“Jesus,” Laika said, “do we have to?”

“Yeah, we do,” I said, “for Mum.” I dragged her outside.

“These are my daughters,” my mother said. “This one is Willa.”

“What a pretty name,” Sheila Bowman said. “Very unusual.”

“She was meant to be a William,” my father said.

“And this one needs a haircut.” My mother took hold of the long, tumbling cords of Laika’s unbrushed hair and twisted them into a sort of high bun around her own fingers. Unable to move, Laika stood scowling, the milk-white skin of her neck exposed, as if waiting by a guillotine. Her fringe covered her eyes. “I’ve been telling her for weeks, but she’s not exactly cooperating.”

“My hair’s fine,” Laika said. She sounded sulky. I glanced at my father. His eyes moved briefly between my mother and sister, his mouth set in a line.

“Well,” my mother said, “you’re definitely going to need one before you go back to school.”

“What a beautiful garden,” Sheila said, “and a swimming pool too. You lucky things. We’ve only got a tennis court.”

“Count your blessings,” my mother said. “A tennis court is so much easier to maintain. All that faffing around with test strips and the like—it’s a total pain.”

“Really?” Sheila said. She sounded amazed. “Don’t you have a little man?”

“Oh, I don’t have help.” My mother’s eyes flashed fleetingly toward my father. She instantly gathered herself. “What I meant was, we don’t need help.” She smiled warmly at Sheila. “But, believe me, those chemicals are filthy. One time I accidentally wiped my face after I’d been handling the chlorine and the pain was excruciating. I honestly thought I was going to lose an eye.” No one said anything, so my mother added, “And the pool house is a bit of an eyesore as well.”

At the mention of the pool house, Laika looked at me and rolled her eyes. Whatever it was, a “pool house” it was not. Rather, it was a squat, airless bunker used to store chemicals, with a roof so low you couldn’t stand up inside. It didn’t even have any windows.

My mother went on, “We only really keep it for the girls.”

There was a moment of silence. Sheila Bowman gave my mother a mild smile.

My mother said, “Have you moved from very far?”

“From Cambridge. It’s been forced on us really, to put distance between us and Graeme’s job. It’s all very tiresome.” Sheila made a face at my mother.

“Oh?”

“Graeme’s a director at Huntingdon Life Sciences.”

My mother looked blank.

My father said, “Biomedical research.”

My mother said, “Oh.”

Laika’s eyes moved from my father to Graeme Bowman.

“It all became terribly uncomfortable,” the woman said. She widened her eyes at my mother, as if they shared a common understanding.

“Oh?”

“Bleeding-heart activists, that’s the problem,” Graeme said. “The animal-rights people. They’re a complete bloody menace. Roadkill on our doorstep. Broken glass. Feces through the letter-box. Couldn’t get away from them. Obviously I’m telling you all this, but even here we’ll keep a low profile. You wouldn’t believe the tactics they use to find out where you live.”

“You’ll be all right here,” my father said. “That’s the primary advantage of a gated community. Makes for a very safe neighborhood.”

“What do you do?” Laika said to the man.

“Why don’t you girls run inside?” my mother said.

Graeme Bowman looked at Laika. “Various types of animal research: medical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic. Mainly we use rats, mice, rabbits, beagles of course, chimps, pigs. Cats. And don’t believe that rubbish you hear about our sourcing them from shelters or stealing people’s pets: that’s a load of nonsense. We’ve a substantial on-site breeding facility: we produce our own guinea pigs, as many as we want. The fact is, it’s important work, necessary, and, dare I say it, a number of the experiments are genuinely fascinating. But try telling the sodding campaigners that—excuse my French, ladies—they’re completely obscene.”

Laika said, “You experiment on animals. Isn’t that obscene?”

A beat of silence, then, “I apologize for my daughter,” my father said; “she really can be exceptionally naive.”

***

Two days later the entire road knew exactly who the new neighbors were. Somebody had thrown a couple of bricks through their kitchen windows.

The news arrived with us at breakfast on the Saturday. Graeme Bowman came round, driving up to the house in a large black Lexus. He pulled two pale yellow bricks out of a bag and my mother quickly produced a kitchen towel for him to put them on, so they wouldn’t scratch the glass table. He said he hoped my parents wouldn’t mind the intrusion, but he’d remembered that our extension was being built from pale yellow brick. Would my parents mind if he checked to see if these bricks matched those? It was such an unusual color. But of course not, my mother said, what a dreadful business it was, and how unfortunate to think how quickly those awful people must have located their home—and to think of the lengths they must have gone to, and how concerning it was to think they had perhaps even been on our property as well, stealing bricks.

My father collected a brick from the pallet. He placed it next to the others on the towel. It was a perfect match.