Page 59 of Oleander

But really, I just want you to come back.

I’ll do whatever you want me to do as long as you come back.

Please,

Jude.

I almost tore the page out again. More than once. But in the end, I didn’t. I slid it under my mattress and decided to sleep on it – literally. I’d read it and see how I felt about it then.

Except that didn’t happen. The following night, as we were setting the table and Beth was standing by the stove cooking chicken stir fry, she’d let out a horrible scream before doubling over in pain.

Those minutes after were sharp with alarm as Luke rushed in from the living room and wrapped her in his arms.

And then I saw the blood. Blood where even I knew there shouldn’t be.

It was the most terrified I’d ever seen my sister. The most hysterical. She was saying ‘no, no, no, no’ over and over as tears streamed out of her eyes.

Shaking and pale, Luke was trying very hard to sound calm as he told me to fetch a bunch of towels from the upstairs press. Next, I was to take the key to Beth’s car from the hook and lay the towels out on the passenger seat.

When I’d done that and come back to the kitchen, he had Beth up and standing, though she was still doubled over and holding her stomach while crying silently into Luke’s chest. I’ve never forgotten the look he gave me over her head, desperate, lost, and already grieving. Because he knew. I think maybe he knew everything that was to follow. The dreadful chain of events that would happen after that awful December night.

Sixteen

In some ways, the loss of Luke and Beth’s baby should have been easier to cope with than the death of my parents.

I didn’t know the baby; I hadn’t even seen it beyond a grainy black-and-white scan attached to the fridge. Honestly, I’d barely thought about it much at all. But the effect it had on Luke and Beth and the easy, comfortable life they’d built around me was tectonic. Like some great shifting of the earth beneath my feet. What had been a solid, predictable, and untroubled home life turned into something else overnight.

The first week after, Beth never left her bed. Luke would come home from work and cook dinner – he wasn’t good at it, so I’d help him peel carrots and potatoes and cook simple, tasteless meals for us at night, which she didn’t eat. He tried to smile at me, but it never quite reached his eyes, and I watched helplessly as strands of grey whispered through his once-dark hair. Death and misery moved into the house with us and refused to adjust to our way of life.

So instead, we adjusted to it.

For the first couple of weeks, it was as though Beth had been the one to die. Luke cried, the house felt cold and quiet, and I never saw her once. If she did venture out of her room, it was after I went to school, and though I could hear soft murmurs and quiet sobs through the walls at night, she felt like a ghost that was haunting the cottage. I suppose I was surprised by howshe was coping – or rather, not coping. As I said, my sister wasn’t a very emotional person, but after the baby died, it was like some other person had emerged from inside her, and they were filled with feeling.

I thought about going to speak to her, to tell her how sorry I was, but I was scared I was the last person she’d want to see. The child she hadn’t wanted while the one she had was gone.

I felt loud and clumsy, as though I was intruding just by existing, so I tried to be as quiet and invisible as possible. It was a familiar pattern; it was the one I’d fallen into when I’d first come to live with Beth and Luke, so it was easy to revert to again.

It was a miserable time and even the weather seemed to agree; the world turning tearfully damp and grey. Jersey rarely saw snow, even in winter, but the rain was a constant pour that seemed to go on without end.

I tried calling Caspien a couple of times that first week, but each time, it would ring a few times before switching to voicemail. There were never the same number of rings, so I knew that he was avoiding me on purpose.

My voicemails were embarrassing. Pathetic. And I would have been ashamed about them except that I missed him so much. All I wanted was to go up to the house and have him snipe, bite, and say something cold to me because that would mean he was here and nothing had changed. That would mean anger and resentment could douse the achingly sad loneliness inside me.

Worse was how Ellie was with me. Asphyxiating me with attention. She treated me like I was some small broken bird she’d found by the road. Talking to me in soft tones, fetching my lunch for me, offering to carry my bag, and levelling big, concerned eyes at me during every class we shared. I didn’t understand it; I felt guilty about it.

Of course, I was sad about the baby. Of course, I was sad for Beth and Luke, and of course, I wished it hadn’t happened, but the weight of sadness lying in the pit of my stomach wasn’t truly about the baby. It was the disappearance of the person haunting my hopes and dreams from my life as suddenly and completely as though I’d lost a limb and was trying to adjust to a life without it.

It did, however, serve as a good cover, and I would often find myself thinking of him, longingly and would glance up to find Ellie giving me one of her doting looks.

By the end of the second week, everything changed once again.

It was Saturday – it also happened to be my sixteenth birthday - and I’d lay in bed until almost noon.

There’d been nothing planned, of course. I would have been surprised if Luke had even remembered (it was always Beth who remembered things like birthdays and anniversaries), and I wasn’t expecting anything.

I was going over to Alfie’s later for a party he’d arranged for me. He’d invited the girls, a few others from our year, and a few lads from Josh’s rugby team. His mum and dad – notoriously relaxed about this kind of thing - were staying overnight at some fancy hotel in town for a Christmas party.

But as I hauled myself out to bed and toward the bathroom, the door to Beth and Luke’s bedroom was pulled open, and Beth emerged.