Seven
SOPHIE
Seeing her dad on the landing, obviously upset, Sophie had stepped back into her bedroom. He hadn’t cried though. It was like he wouldn’t allow himself to. Her mum, too. She’d been sitting in Luke’s room mostly. Whenever she did come out, she moved around the house like a ghost, her arms wrapped around herself, as if keeping everything in. Keeping everyone out. She’d been shutting out her dad. Blaming him, obviously, because he’d been driving, which was just so fucking unfair.
Since he’d broken the news to Sophie at the hospital, his voice cracking and his face deathly white, her dad hadn’t spoken to her much either, other than to ask if she was all right.
Her mum kept asking her the same question, as if she could ever be. As if any of them could. Or else she snapped at her if she moved anything of Luke’s. And then she would apologise. Why didn’t they just let it out? Stop tiptoeing around each other and scream at each other, if that’s what it took?
She kept assuring them she was okay. How could she not, when they were hurting so much? But she wasn’t okay – stuck here in her room, because wherever else she went, she felt in the way, as if she were somehow intruding. They’d be devastated if she said it out loud, but that truly was how she felt, like she daren’t say or do anything that might touch a raw nerve.
Her teacher, who had rung her to see how she was, had suggested she write down her feelings. She needn’t show it to anyone, she’d said. Some things, on reflection, are better left unsaid, but it might be therapeutic, she’d told her. It did help. Sophie glanced down at the notebook she’d been scrawling in, the contents of which would definitely devastate her parents, and then plucked it up and stuffed it well under her clothes in her chest of drawers.
She debated whether to ring her mate Chloe, but then decided against. Chloe had been texting her constantly. She made the right noises, but she didn’t understand, not really, that she felt as cold and empty as the house did without Luke in it. That with his funeral somehow to get through, she didn’t want to go out, to the cinema, clubbing to ‘lose herself on the dance floor’, or anywhere else. She didn’t want to sing either. She listened to her music – Adele, mostly, whose soulful emotion fitted her mood. Sophie wished she might be as good as her one day. She didn’t sing along though. She didn’t have the heart. All she wanted to do was stay cocooned under her quilt, left alone, preferably. But she couldn’t even do that for her mum or her dad coming up every two minutes, like they were on a rota or something, to ask the perpetual question.
Sighing heavily, Sophie wandered back to her bed, picked up her phone and plugged her earphones in. She was selecting her playlist when there was an inevitable tap on the door. Her dad, she guessed. He usually waited before entering – ‘at his own peril’, he once would have said. Would he ever joke again, Sophie wondered, or smile or laugh?
‘Yup, I’m here,’ she called. She wasn’t sure why she’d said that. Because part of her suspected they were frightened she wouldn’t be. That something terrible might have happened to her too.
Her dad did smile when he came in. A forced smile. He looked at her, worriedly, as Sophie had expected he would, as if she might fall apart or self-combust on the bed or something. ‘I thought I’d get some food,’ he said, trying to sound normal.
Sophie shrugged. She wasn’t hungry. None of them were.
‘I thought pizza, maybe?’ Scratching his forehead with his thumb, her dad shrugged in turn, as if he knew that it would stick in her throat, whatever it was.
‘If you like.’ Sophie offered him a small smile back, when what she really wanted to do was go to him and hug him. She couldn’t though. She’d tried that when he’d arrived home. She’d gone to him, wrapped her arms around him. She’d hurt his chest. She could tell when he’d winced. He’d said he was fine, just a bit sore from where they’d inserted the tube; that was all. Bullshit. He wasn’t fine. It was utter bollocks, pretending he was coping, when he quite clearly wasn’t.
‘Pepperoni with extra cheese?’ he suggested, his voice tight, trying so hard not to crack it was heartbreaking.
‘Sounds good.’ Knowing he needed her to, Sophie played along.
Her dad ran a hand over his neck, nodded and turned to the door. And then turned back. ‘Sophie,’ he said, walking across to her, ‘if you want to talk about anything…’ He faltered. ‘About Luke… I’m here. You know that, right? I’m listening.’
Glancing down at her phone, Sophie swiped a hand under her nose. She didn’t say anything. She wanted to. Wanted desperately to talk about Luke, about what had happened, but with her mum and dad clearly unable to, how could she?
‘Sophie?’ Her dad hesitated, and then sat down on her bed. ‘It’s okay to cry, you know,’ he said softly, taking hold of her hand.
He had nice hands. Sophie swallowed. Clean fingernails. A surgeon’s hands, those of a man who saved lives. But he hadn’t been able to save his own son. Sophie had heard him at the hospital, cursing himself, cursing the ‘fucking bastard’ who’d hit them and run. Blaming himself.
Sophie looked up then, searching his eyes. Steel-blue eyes, Sophie would term them. She’d always been able to read them: a soft twinkle therein when he’d tease her, usually about her ‘tarantula’ eyelashes or her eyebrow stud – her face jewellery, as he called it; when he hugged her, which he’d always done often. Now they were stormy, almost gunmetal grey. Uncertain, tortured eyes. ‘Is it?’ she asked him.
Her dad looked away, which pretty much communicated that he didn’t think it was okay, not for him anyway.
‘Have they found him yet?’ Sophie asked. ‘The man who cut the lights?’
Her dad took a breath and shook his head. ‘Not yet, no.’ Sophie could feel his frustration.
‘Will they?’ She kept looking at him, willing him to look at her. To let down his guard and look at her properly.
‘I’m not sure. I hope so,’ he said, pressing a thumb hard to his forehead.
‘Will they prosecute him? If they do find him, will they charge him?’
‘I don’t know, Sophie.’ Again, he faltered, looking awkward, as if he wanted to protect her. But he couldn’t. This was happening to her too. She wasn’t a child. She read the newspapers, watched the news. Knew that, if they did find him and they did prosecute him, he might get no more than a slap on the wrist. ‘It depends on whether they have enough—’
He was cut off as the telephone rang, yet again. Saved by the bell, Sophie thought wearily.
Her heart sank as her dad got to his feet, going to answer the bloody thing, talk to people who didn’t have a clue what to say. Talk to me! She wanted to scream after him. I’m listening!
Her mum knocked and came straight in, catching Sophie unawares. She’d been going to watch Netflix stuff on her iPad, but nothing seemed appealing. She’d given up eventually and curled up under the duvet.
‘I brought you some pizza,’ her mum said, as Sophie poked her head out.
‘Thanks.’ Sophie nodded, squinting against the sudden light from the lamp.
‘You will eat it, won’t you?’ her mum asked, worry flitting across her eyes as she placed the pizza on the bedside table.
Realising she looked worse than she had when she’d last seen her – drained and definitely in need of some sustenance herself – Sophie straightened herself up. ‘I’m not really very hungry, but I’ll try,’ she promised.
Her mum didn’t look convinced. ‘You have to eat something, Sophie. You need to keep your strength—’
‘And so do you!’ Sophie snapped, and then felt immediately guilty. ‘Look, I’ll eat it, Mum. Okay? I don’t need to be mollycoddled or treated like I’m incapable.’
Her mum looked bewildered at that. ‘I wasn’t aware I was treating you like anything.’
‘Seriously?’ Sophie widened her eyes. ‘You’re bringing me dinner in bed? I’d have to have been dying for you to do that normally.’
Shit! Shit, shit, shit! She hadn’t meant to say that.
Seeing the stunned look on her mum’s face, Sophie felt tears stinging the back of her eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, dropping her gaze. ‘I didn’t mean…’
‘I know.’ Perching herself on the edge of the bed, Alicia reached out to place a hand on her arm. ‘It’s okay to grieve, Sophie,’ she said softly. ‘It’s natural to be—’
‘So grieve then!’ Sophie yelled over her. She couldn’t stand this any more. ‘Talk to each other, why don’t you – not me. Stop trying to act like you’re not crucified inside!’
Alicia snatched her hand away, as if she’d been burned. ‘You’re angry,’ she said, understandingly, deflecting the conversation away from herself. ‘It’s natural. You’re bound to—’
‘Yes, I’m angry!’ Sophie shouted louder. ‘Bloody angry!’ Dragging her hair from her face, she glared at Alicia, whose face had now drained of the little colour she’d had. Sophie knew she was hurting her, but she couldn’t stop. They needed to be told. They needed shaking out of this… stupor. To be there for each other. ‘I’m angry at the injustice of it,’ she went on furiously. ‘The cruelty! Angry with you!’
‘Me?’ Alicia asked shakily.
‘Both of you.’ Sophie looked past her mum to her dad, who, clearly having overheard, had appeared on the landing. ‘You’re treating me like a child. Sparing me the details. I don’t want to be spared! I want to know what’s going on. I don’t want you wrapping me up in cotton wool! Don’t you understand?’
‘Sophie…’ Justin stepped in, his face taut, definitely angry. Good! She wanted him to be angry. She wanted him to do something. Shout, swear, throw things. Anything but walk around here like a dead-inside zombie.
‘What?’ Sophie turned on him. ‘Luke was my baby brother. I might have said he did nothing but eat, puke and poo, but I loved him, Dad. I loved him. I miss him, and my heart is hurting so badly, and I can’t talk to you, because we’re all walking around on goddamned eggshells.’
Sophie glared at him, her expression defiant, her shoulders heaving.
Nodding slowly, Justin walked across to sit on the edge of the bed next to Alicia. He hesitated for a second and then reached out to take Alicia’s hand.
Her mum curled her fingers around his, Sophie noticed, relief washing through her.
Pressing his thumb against his forehead, in that way he did, her dad took a breath and then reached for her hand too. ‘There are several stages of grief, Sophie,’ he said, glancing at Alicia. ‘I think we’ve both been in the denial stage. We’re getting there.’ He tried to sound reassuring.
Sophie wasn’t sure she was reassured entirely, but at least they were acknowledging it.
‘I think you might be in the anger stage – with good reason,’ her dad went on. ‘I’m sorry if I… we appear to have been distant. Sometimes, I…’ He hesitated. ‘I find I struggle to say how I feel, because I think it might trigger emotions I’m not sure other people can handle. I suspect that might be true for your mum too, just now.’
Smiling sadly, he squeezed her hand. ‘You’re right, though: we do need to talk. We’re not other people, are we? We’re a family. We need each other.’
Sounding choked, he looked again at Alicia.
Sophie followed his gaze, to where her mum was sitting with her head bowed. Crying. She was crying. Shit! Sophie saw one tear plop from her chin, and then another.
‘Oh God, Mum, I’m sorry.’ She shuffled across to her. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, sliding her arms around her. ‘You can cry on my shoulder. I don’t mind a bit of snot on my T-shirt, honest I don’t.’