Chapter Twenty-Nine

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I.

Broke.

Down.

But not in the way I expected.

There were no tears, no anger, it was like I just went . . . numb, like that coldness, that black hole inside had completely swallowed me up and now I couldn't feel anything at all.

Somehow my friends had found out – my phone lit up with calls and texts all day. I didn't answer a single one.

Kell came round, but I couldn't even bring myself to answer the door. So he waited outside all day, beneath my window, endlessly patient.

Dad didn't come home.

Lori locked herself in her room and didn't come out.

When night fell, Kell left, but he texted me to say that he was just a phone call away. He would come the second I needed him to.

How long would he wait before giving up?

The next day came, and I knew I wasn't going to school. I couldn't imagine ever going back to school. The whole world had stopped for me, and I didn't see how it would ever start to turn again.

I hadn't even been able to say goodbye.

I should have been there with her. I should never have let Dad dictate when I could or could not see her. He'd got what he wanted – he'd been with her up until the end, but he didn't seem to give a shit that he'd sacrificed his daughters' time with her in the process.

Kell had said that grief worked differently for everyone, and while that was true, and while this might all be Dad's way of coping with his own grief, I didn't see how I could ever forgive him for this.

In some ways, I'd lost both my parents.

That first morning after she died, I went back to her room downstairs. It was still locked, of course, and for a long moment I just stood there, staring at it. There were dirty smudges on the white wood where I'd kicked it.

Dad had kept me from Mum during her last days, but he didn't own her.

Fuck his rules, and fuck his locked doors.

I went to the living room.

On a side-table, next to his silver tray of whiskies, Dad kept a stone bust of some historical figure I didn't know or care about. I'd been fascinated by it as kid, but Dad had never let me touch it, claiming it was too expensive.

Now I picked it up, hefting in both hands, and calmly walked back to Mum's locked door. Then I smashed it down on the lock.

Chips of stone sheared off and scattered on the floor, but I didn't stop. I smashed Dad's precious statue on the lock again and again and again. Bits of stone cut my hands, and blood dripped onto the carpet, but I didn't feel a thing, just this need to tear down the wall he had put up.

Tears streamed down my face, but I didn't make a sound, until the twisted, broken lock started coming away from the door, then I grabbed it with both hands and pulled. Fingernails snapped off, but I didn't feel that either.

At last the door opened.

I dropped the ruined statue onto the floor, my chest heaving, and stepped into the room.

The first thing that hit me was the smell of my mum's perfume. She hadn't stopped wearing it, not once, and that familiar rosy smell cut right to the numb block of stone that was my heart.

How long until that smell faded?

I gazed at the rumpled bed, still bearing the imprint of Mum's body, the wedding photo of her and Dad that she kept on the nightstand, the shoes lined up by the wall.

Would Lori and I even be allowed to keep anything of Mum's or would Dad monopolise that too?

His smiling face gazed out from their wedding photo, and I couldn't even stand to look at him. I placed the photo, facedown, on the table.

I climbed into Mum's bed, resting my head on the pillow, where she had slept. The perfume smell was stronger here – the smell of roses and something that was uniquely Mum. I slipped my arms around the pillow, trying to imagine that I was hugging her one last time, and my hand brushed something small and furry.

I pulled it out, and my lips parted in a silent sob.

Staring back at me, its little whiskers squashed on one side, was the stuffed lion Mum had bought for me all those years ago at the zoo. I had thought it was long gone, but she must have rescued it, and she'd had it with her this whole time.

Suddenly I could feel again, and the second I could, I wished I couldn't, because the wave of pain that hit was so overwhelming, it felt like it was tearing me apart.

I couldn't breathe.

She was gone.

She was gone, and she was never coming back, and I didn't get a chance to say goodbye, and I was so fucking angry at the world, so fucking angry at the bastard illness that had taken her from us, and there was nothing I wouldn't have given for just one more hour with her.

I collapsed onto her bed, curling into a tight ball, clutching the little lion, and cried until it felt like I would drown in my own tears.





I didn't realise I had fallen asleep until a loud yell woke me up. I peeled my aching eyelids apart, and lifted my head.

Dad took in the doorway, his face contorted with rage.

"What are you doing? Get out of her bed," he shouted.

I was slow to move, unfolding my stiff limbs, but not letting go of the toy lion.

Dad looked at the broken statue on the floor, and his face turned puce. "What . . . what did you do?" he sputtered.

I tucked the lion under my arm and faced him. "What I had to."

"You've got no right to be in here."

"Fuck you. She was my mum."

Was.

I hated that word.

Dad stabbed a finger at me. "Do not speak to me like that, young lady."

"Why not?" I gave a bitter laugh, hard and full of sharp edges. "What are you going to do – stop me from seeing my dying mum? Oh wait, you already did that."

Dad's eyes went to the bed, and his mouth made several shapes but no words came out.

Then: "You've ruined it," he said.

I looked back at the bed. Little spots of blood from my cut hands stained the cream lace covers. I hadn't meant to bleed on it, but I couldn't change it now. There was blood on the lion too.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking," I snapped.

Dad didn't know where that blood had come from. For all he knew, I could have really hurt myself, and he just didn't seem to care.

He held out a shaking hand. "Give me that."

I looked down at the lion. Its whiskers were squashed, and its mane needed a good brush, but it still had that bright, stitched smile I remembered, the thing that had drawn me to it in the first place. It had looked like the happiest lion in the shop.

"No," I said, tucking it tighter under my arm.

"Give it to me!"

A deadly sort of calm settled on me. I looked my dad square in the face, and said, "This is mine. If you try and take it from me, I will break your fucking nose."

"How dare you."

His words might have been a slap.

Rage boiled up in me, hot and searing, and spilled out of my mouth like I was breathing fire. "How dare I? How fucking dare I? How dare you? Ever since Mum was diagnosed, you've treated Lori and me like we're not even your kids anymore. We've just been inconveniences to you."

"That's not true," Dad said, but his voice was quieter now and he wasn't looking at me.

"Yes, it is. You've shut us out and pushed us away and stopped us from seeing Mum. Because of you, we didn't even get to say goodbye. Are you happy now? Are you happy that you got to control her last days? Are you happy that you kept us away?" I was screaming now, my throat raw. "I hate you. I wish you had died instead of Mum, you heartless bastard."

Dad started to say something, but I cut him off.

"I don't ever want to see you again. Fuck you."

I stormed past him, using my shoulder to barge him out of the way, and he didn't resist.

He didn't come after me either.

I didn't expect him to.

But it still hurt.

Lori stood at the foot of the stairs, her eyes huge. "What's going on?"

"I have to get out of here." I gave her a quick hug, squashing the lion's fluffy head. "I love you and I'm sorry, but I can't be here."

She didn't get a chance to protest.

I was out of the front door and running before she even fully realised what was going on.





Kell hadn't come back yet, but I texted him and told him I was going to Warren's. I didn't know where else to go.

I didn't check to see if he replied, I just ran as fast as I could, trying to leave all the anger and the pain behind me. I think I knocked into someone at some point, but the world around me seemed fuzzy-edged and hard to see.

But when I saw Kell, hurrying across the street towards me, everything sharpened into focus. He had come for me. Before I could say a word, he lifted me into his arms and held me tight against his chest.

"I've got you," he whispered, kissing the top of my head. "I've got you, and I won't let you go."

I didn't cry again until we were in Warren's house, until Kell was sitting on the edge of his bed with me in his lap, and then the pain and grief broke out of me in a raw howl. I cried until there was nothing left inside, until my whole body was exhausted and scraped bloody raw, and then I sagged against his chest, trying to suck air into my lungs. My face was a mess of tears and snot. Kell cleaned me up with one of his t-shirts, and bandaged my bleeding fingers.

He eased me onto the bed and lay behind me, his arms around my waist, his body pressed against mine, curved protectively around me.

Eventually I fell asleep again.





My eyes ached when I opened them, like someone had plucked my eyeballs out of their sockets, run them all over with razor blades and then rolled them in broken glass.

Before today I hadn't known it was physically possible to cry that much.

Kell still lay behind me, holding me, but I could tell by the rhythm of his breathing that he was awake. I breathed in the familiar smell of him, green apple gum and the faint trace of cigarettes.

"Can I get you anything?" he whispered, his breath warm on my ear.

"Yeah," I said, my voice hoarse. "You can roll me a joint."

Even if I knew how to do it myself, my fingers were all messed up, both from the cuts, and from the fingernails I'd shredded.

Kell was quiet for a moment, probably mentally warring with himself. He didn't want me to go down the same path he had, but I was asking for weed, not coke, and he wouldn't refuse me that. Not today.

"Okay," he said at last, and disentangled himself from me.

I lay in bed while he rolled the joint, hugging the lion to my chest. It smelled of Mum's perfume, and I buried my face in its mane and breathed deep, trying to commit that smell to memory.

"I told my dad I hated him," I said.

"Do you?" Kell asked, lighting the joint and handing it to me.

"Yes," I said at once, then took a long drag, holding the smoke in my mouth for as long as I could. Then I blew it out. "I don't know. I hate everything he's done, and I hate that I don't think I've ever been good enough for him, but it's not like he's been an awful dad my whole life. But he's changed so much."

So have you, a little voice whispered.

"You said that grief works differently for different people, but what if this isn't grief? What if he never wanted Lori and me, and Mum was the only thing making him care?" I said.

Kell shuffled across the floor until he was sitting next to the bed, his face level with mine. "Do you really believe that?"

"I don't know. I don't know what to believe anymore."

Kell stroked my cheek, his touch feather-light. "I don't know your dad. I don't know what he was like before this."

I sighed, blowing smoke up at the ceiling. "In so many ways, he was still a prick. But . . . in so many ways he wasn't. I know parents aren't perfect, but I don't know what happened to the man who used to carry me around on his shoulders, and tickle my feet, and read me bedtime stories. I don't know what happened to my dad."

"Maybe he doesn't know either. None of you have been helping each other through this, so none of you are coping with it properly."

"I can't go home," I whispered.

"You can stay here as long as you want," Kell said at once.

"Oh yeah? What does Warren have to say about that?"

Kell shrugged. "Probably nothing. Not as long as I keep paying him."

"You're paying him to stay here?" I don't know why that surprised me.

"Well, yeah. You didn't think he was letting me stay rent-free, did you?"

I mimicked his shrug. Honestly, I hadn't thought about it all. I'd just been happy that Kell had somewhere to go.

Kell reached out and took a few strands of my hair, twisting them around his finger. "I used to crash here a lot when I was . . . helping him sell stuff, and he didn't charge me rent then, because I was basically working for him. But I'm not selling anything for him now, so I have to pay. If Warren wants to charge more for you being here, then I'll just pay more."

"I've got money, but thank you," I said, touching his face.

"And if, for any reason, Warren does have a problem with you staying, then we'll find somewhere else to go. I'm not leaving you on your own."

"But that can't last forever," I pointed out.

"Who says it has to? Let's just worry about the here and now."

Fresh tears brimmed in my eyes – how could there possibly be any left? I was too exhausted to wipe them away; they soaked into the lion's mane.

"I'm scared, Kell. I don't know how to live without my mum and I keep fucking everything up."

"I'm not going to leave you, Laini," Kell said, taking my hand and kissing my knuckles. "Even if you're a dick to me again, I won't leave you."

I clung to his hand and tried to draw some kind of strength from it, but I was so very, very tired.

And that awful numbness was starting to creep back over me.

If Kell couldn't reach me through that, then nothing could.

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