When I was 15 my older sister disappeared. One day she was there, squabbling with me about stealing her clothes and laughing over the table at dinner, then she was just gone. After a while it was as if her very existence had been pretend, the imaginary friend who we all shared. The evidence of her life was all there. Her muddy purple wellies stood sential by the back door, waiting for their wearer; the green polo dozed lopsidedly behind the garage. Then eventually they just became part of the everyday, like the bricks that make up the walls or the branches of the oak tree outside. Jen may have existed, but the world forgot easily.
Then, on a warm October morning 5 years later, she was danced down the road by burning Autumn leaves and waltzed through the open door.
