Page 54 of Unbind

‘Okay,’ she whispers, spoon suspended above her pudding.

‘You look pale. Keep eating.’

She rolls her eyes, but I suspect she’s picking her battles, because she takes another spoonful of chia seeds. I twist my body so I’m facing her as much as possible on the sofa.

‘I picked on your brother at school, I won’t deny that. I picked on lots of kids.’

She flinches almost imperceptibly, and it takes all the discipline I’ve honed in the past two decades to give her the space she deserves to process and judge rather than reaching out to her.

I plough on. ‘I was a total dick at school. I was… unhappy and bored, and most of the teachers had written me off, and things at home were… really rough.’ I lay my hand on the lid of the box. ‘But if it’s okay, I’d like to show you what my mental state was at that time. If I’m completely honest, I barely remember the attack itself. What you need to know is thatthishappened five days before I beat your brother up.’

Here goes.

My mouth is dry as I lift the lid off what is essentially a shrine to a soul far too young, far too pure, to have been so short for this world. She used to cry on me and laugh with me. She used to hug me so tightly and smile so brightly, and while her memory is dazzling, her body is dust. Even aftertwo decades, I will never, ever fail to feel that fact as the most searing pain, as a void so cavernous it astonishes me.

It’s an effort to hold myself together when I’m brave enough to open this box, and I despise that the innocence of Ellen’s memory is so inextricably linked to an event so horrific, so shameful. I tarnished it that day, and I allowed my demons to set in motion atrocities that impacted lives far beyond our own family’s, and I’m so fucking ashamed I’ll never live it down.

On top of the pile of keepsakes and photo albums is, as always, the order of service from Ellen’s funeral. It’s a low-quality black-and-white photocopy, printed on shitty paper and folded in half to make a booklet. But the photo on the front, a school photo, is one of my favourites. Mum had been sober enough to do her hair that day, and she was so pretty with her French plaits. They even had little bows on the end. You can’t see it in the printout, but they were red, to match her sweatshirt.

But it’s her smile that gets me. So bright. So trusting. You can see the trust radiating off the page. She always had faith that her big brother would be there for her, to look out for her and to monitor her levels and see her through when she was so little, so vulnerable.

And I fucking failed her.

32

NATALIE

Iput down my pudding so I can take the thin piece of folded paper Adam hands me. As I glance over the front of it, it’s as if my brain is wading through treacle, so slow am I to piece it together.

Order of Service.

In memory of Ellen Grace Wright, aged 10, who is now with the angels.

On the front, there’s a grainy black-and-white formal school photo of a beautiful little girl with immaculate, fair-haired plaits, a huge smile, and what I swear is my old school uniform.

I look at the date.

Oh my God.

Oh my fucking Christ.

No no no no no.

I jerk my head up. Adam’s looking at the paper, his face contorted with grief and disbelief and God knows what else.

‘No.’ I say, my tone pleading. This can’t be true—please Lord, no. This is too much, too horrific.

‘My little sister’—he clears his throat, devastationevident in his voice—‘died in her sleep five days before I lost my shit.’ He pauses. ‘She had a bad hypo, and she went into a coma, and…’

Oh my God. Oh my God. I clamp a hand over my mouth, because I can’t bear it. My brain is a tornado of thoughts. Every time he’s tried to feed me, tried to check my levels, I’ve been a total bitch. I thought he was an overbearing pain in the arse. I hypoed in front of him, for Pete’s sake! Even through the haze of the aftermath, I recognised how upset he was when I came around.

He lost his little sister.

And when he attacked my brother, it was five days later.

I tug the blanket off and crawl over so I can straddle him, burying my head in his neck and wrapping my arms around him as tightly as I can, as if I can squeeze all that grief and horror and regret away. The tears come instantly.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say against his skin. ‘I’m sofuckingsorry.’ I’m apologising as much for my irresponsible blood glucose management and ingratitude as I am for the unthinkable loss he’s endured.

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