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Toronto, 1990. Diana was thirteen and sitting in a sturdy, wooden chair by a small, octagonal window in her top-floor bedroom of her family’s Toronto home, looking out. Her arm had healed enough that her doctor had removed the cast the day before. When he did, sawing through the plaster mold that had accompanied her throughout the summer, she was struck by the sight and smell of her arm: shriveled and pale, damp and weak, reeking of something close to decay. She stared at it, and the doctor had chuckled, not unkindly, suggesting that it would take some getting used to, but that with enough sunshine and play, it’d be good as new. She’d cradled it in her other arm as she got up to leave the hospital room with her mother, and the doctor had said, ‘Try not to do that, Diana.’ She looked at him, questioning. ‘Don’t coddle it. It’s stronger than it looks.’

She thought of that now and looked down at her arm, white and clammy like some deep-sea creature, resting in her lap. She flexed it, straightening it.Sunshine and play. She returned to her familiar viewpoint out the window. She had kept the chair in this position, at this angle, all summer. Turned just so, so she could see more. Looking out, looking in.

She had taken to drawing what she saw from her window and, after all of these weeks in her cast, banished from summer activities, from the lake and sports, her antique wooden desk was scattered with pencil studies. She glanced at them, feeling a thin pride at how her skill had improved over the weeks. She was nothing if not disciplined, and was pleased by results that came from practicing a thing. On her lap now was her sketchbook; in her right hand, her pencil; but she hadn’t drawn anything today. She tilted her head, the better to see the scene next door.

The Taylors’ house seemed to be made almost entirely of glass. From her perch in her room, Diana could see all of the goings-on. She could watch someone walk from the kitchen to the dining room, see them reappear on the stairs, and then in an upper-floor bedroom. Her vantage point gave her full access to one side of the house, like a page from a Richard Scarry storybook, a cross-section of a life shared. The notion of this, being part of something together, this version of family, was foreign and fascinating to Diana, whose family members seemed to exist on solitary planes, remote from one another. She watched now as Mrs Taylor,the Marianne Taylor, the famous fashion designer, called to one of her sons to help her reach something in a cupboard in the kitchen. Diana, so tall herself, thought of how she would like to do this small thing for her, retrieve something out of reach. Be useful and appreciated. Needed. Such a small act of kindness and teamwork. The eldest Taylor son, who responded to her call, easily grasped a box from the cupboard and lowered it for his mother. Diana could see that it featured a photo of some kitchen gadget on the front. Mrs Taylor smoothed her son’s hair and patted his cheek. He allowed this, then left the room. Diana’s gaze didn’t follow him but continued to watch Marianne as she opened the box in the kitchen. It was a mandoline, that dangerously sharp tool that looked and sounded like an instrument, for cutting food into paper-thin slices. Marianne ran her index finger slowly beside the blade, a motion so private in that interior space that Diana blinked, strangely moved. Something else caught her eye. A shadow, a movement in the Taylor yard.

Diana’s own brother, Keith.

He said it had been an accident, her arm breaking. It had happened at their holiday home, the summer cottage up north in Muskoka, one weekend in early June. All the Tony Toronto types had large cottages around the lake and, come June, Muskoka was overflowing with city wealth, gliding around on water skis. The Martins had been all together, as a family. Diana’s mother was inside the cottage, reading a book, their father on the balcony, at the barbeque. Keith was horsing around with the kids from a neighbouring cottage: Jodi and her brother, Mike, who had come to see if Keith and Diana wanted to hang out. They were taking turns racing down the hill from the cottage, across the dock to the water and jumping in the lake – a forested, rocky terrain that required dodging and weaving and speed. Mike held his father’s old track and field stopwatch, the yellowed cord hanging down from his hands. They were trying to best each other, see who was fastest from the time they started running to the time they hit the water.

Diana watched from some distance away. She too was strong and fast, and it looked like fun, but she had never participated in things like this. Because of Keith. Her entire life, he had bullied her, told her she sucked, that she was useless and slow and stupid. Her brother’s dismissal was as constant as air, as real as life itself. When she was younger, it had confused her. Their parents had always favoured Keith – their only son, their firstborn – and so it confounded her that he so relentlessly kept her down. She used to try to make him proud, assuming he was just hard to impress. But every achievement of hers was read as something that should have been his, something she stole. It was greed, paired with bloodlust. She had seen him enjoy causing fear and intimidation in younger kids at school, laugh loudly and cruelly at suffering. He was someone for whom the top, the best, was rightfully his, a position to be protected by any means necessary. And so Diana had learned to never threaten his birthright to happiness and satisfaction, to never risk drawing his attention. She pursued different sports, activities she knew bored him. It made little difference. Keith didn’t hate Diana, although she could see how someone might think that – other kids had remarked that he did. She wished he’d hated her; that would mean he considered her at all. He didn’t hate her; he loved his life. She was merely the closest threat, the nearest target. He worked in a broad, boorish style of bullying: name-calling, belittling, mocking. Her appearance, her height, her lack of