Chapter 3

Four weeks. Elijah and I have been orphans now for four entire weeks.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Mum and Dad aren’t just on holiday, or a work trip. Some days reality is too heavy a cross to bear, and my childish mind goes back to that secret fantasy land. There, I let myself believe they were coming back for us. Soon we’ll be back home in our plush semi-detached house in Forest Gate, with its three double bedrooms and two reception rooms. Not to mention the attic room that’d been converted into Dad’s home office. We weren’t supposed to go up there, but I often did, when Dad wasn’t home, and I wanted to be alone for a while.

The house used to feel cramped, even with just the four of us. That seems ridiculous now, considering our current situation. Apparently, no foster families were willing to take two teenagers at once. One had offered to take just me... obviously assuming the girl would be less of a hassle than the testosterone-ridden seventeen-year-old boy.

They wouldn't believe that if they met us. Elijah and I get along just fine, mostly, and that’s completely down to my brother. He’s the calm one. He’s the one who thinks before he speaks because I’ll just blurt out whatever is on my mind, and to hell with the consequences.

Eli has never even been in detention. I, on the other hand... well, let’s just say I gave Mum and Dad their fair share of headaches, and Eli was always the peacemaker campaigning for leniency for my heinous crimes against the institution. I swear, he’s going to be a defense lawyer one day.

I'd kicked up a fuss when one of the other social workers suggested separating the two of us. Even Eli himself had ‘expressed his concern’, as he put it. Ever the polite one, my brother. It was Rachel Johnson who'd put a stop to it though, arguing that, considering our trauma, it would be detrimental to our wellbeing to be housed separately. She found us a residential home with two spare rooms the same day. I probably should have thanked her for that. Eli will have done.

Sitting on the edge of the lumpy mattress I’ve been assigned, I think back on all the times that I would bang on the wall that I shared with Eli, yelling for him to keep it down while he played on his Xbox. I’d longed for that so many times over the last four weeks, while I lay on this unfamiliar bed, boxed in by similarly unfamiliar walls, with strangers on the other side of them instead of my brother.

But Mum and Dad weren’t coming to take us home. They would never pick us up from school and surprise us with a McDonald’s and cinema trip, or a ‘Miller Special’, as Dad called it. He’d never come home late from work on a Wednesday and announce that he just had to have pizza for dinner because he’d had such a long, hard day. Mum would never argue that she’d already defrosted something for said dinner and then give up when he wrapped his arms around her from behind and she giggled like a teenager.

Elijah and I used to catch each other’s gaze at those moments and roll our eyes. Sometimes we'd pretend to throw up, just for good measure. But it was heart-warming to see, really, how in love they still were after all those years. Even though, as I'd often joke, they’d spent seventeen of those years stuck with my brother...

I can’t resist a small smile from pulling at my lips as another memory flashes. I used to say that they had to try for another baby because they failed so badly with the first one, and God granted them me for their troubles. Elijah argued the opposite; that he was such a delight that they couldn’t wait for another and stopped with me because I was such a nightmare.

A loud rap at the door pulls me from my thoughts. Groaning, I push myself up off the bed and cross the tiny room to pull the door open, finding Rachel Johnson standing on the other side. She smiles at me warmly, undeterred when I don’t reciprocate her friendly greeting.

“All packed?” she asks, glancing over my shoulder to inspect behind me.

I purse my lips to stop rolling my eyes and turn to peer back into the room that has been mine for the past month. It’s half the size of my bedroom at home, with only a single bed instead of the double one that I’m used to. The walls are a bare pink, with bits of blue tack and drawing pins still stuck around them from the previous occupant. They told me I could put some photos or posters up on the walls if I wanted to. To make it feel more like home, Rachel had said. I didn’t. This room wasn’t my home, and I saw no point in pretending otherwise.

But the room back in Forest Gate isn’t mine anymore either, is it? I remind myself and feel a stab of grief in my gut. They have probably sold the house already, to pay off the mortgage. I know Mum and Dad still owed it because I heard them whispering a few months ago when there was talk of redundancies at Dad’s company. Mum started freaking out about how we'd survive if he lost his job. She'd painted a smile on her face as soon as I stepped into the kitchen, though, and then had asked what I wanted for dinner. Just like nothing was wrong at all.

At least they don’t have to worry about stuff like that anymore. I think deprecatingly. Someone new has probably already moved into my room. They’ve probably already picked out a new wallpaper to replace the dinosaur one I’d had since I was a little kid and never got around to changing. I’ll never step foot in that room again.

They’re becoming less frequent, the stabs of pain that accompany those flashes of memory, or the reminders that my life is ruined. But they still happen now and then and, when they do, it feels like my body might spontaneously combust at the intensity of it. I think that’ll probably always happen. Like picking up a new phrase and adapting it into your normal vocabulary, those waves of grief are a part of me now. Life will never be as carefree as it was before.

The room behind me is empty, except for the bed, with the duvet strewn haphazardly across it, and my single suitcase standing by the base. I have no doubt that Eli’s bed would have been made up perfectly before he vacated his room. He’s always been weird that way. But if the untidiness of my abode bothers Rachel, she says nothing. Just continues to smile at me. It’s nauseating.

I bite back the urge to respond sarcastically as I take in the sight of the empty room.

Instead, replying with only a single word.

“Yep.”

Rachel nods approvingly. “Great! Elijah is downstairs waiting. I want to be on the road as soon as possible because we've got a long drive ahead.” She pauses as she steps back to let me wheel my suitcase out into the hallway. “Have you said all your goodbyes?” she asks once the bedroom door is closed behind me.

“Yes.” I say, but it’s a lie. There isn’t anyone I want to say goodbye to. Eli made some friends in this place, but I didn’t. The other girls on my floor seemed nice enough, and a couple of them tried to talk to me when we first got here, but I blew them off. I don’t know why, and I felt a little guilty about it. But I didn’t feel like making friends, I guess. Happy to wallow alone in my self-pity.

Safe to say, I don’t think anyone is going to miss me now that we are leaving.

Rachel continues to chatter as we walk down the hall and to the stairs, and then she helps carry my suitcase down the two flights to the ground floor. I don’t listen to a word she’s saying. My mind is too lost in thought, too concerned about where we are heading.

Yorkshire, according to Rachel. Apparently, we have a long-lost grandmother, which is strange, because Dad told us she died not long after I was born.

But what’s even stranger? She’s agreed to take in two teenage orphans that she doesn’t even know. The woman is either a total badass or completely crazy.

I’m not sure which one is worse.