Blood Ties: Family is not always a place of safety. Julie Shaw

affair. With Darren being the son of the landlady of the local pub, it was always going to be, but it was also because he’d been a porter at St Luke’s Hospital; despite his gambling, his resultant debts and his constant scrounging, Darren’s sense of humour and devil-may-care nature had won him a large number of friends.

      The main reason, however, was that Darren had been so young. It was that, more than anything, that pressed on Kathleen’s mind. That twenty – an age full of energy and potential – was an unspeakably young age to die.

      She fixed a black ribbon round her ponytail, not bothering to primp and preen, her only concern being quite how she’d find the strength to get through the day. She just didn’t feel strong enough, either physically or mentally. Since that horrible, heart-stopping, never-to-be-forgotten night, she had barely stopped crying herself – it was as if she couldn’t stop crying, no matter how hard she tried.

      In the days following Darren’s death, it had seemed that life had lost all its forward momentum. She’d wake up, and it would be there, this huge, looming reality. Like a boulder in her path that could not be moved. He was dead. It was final. He was never coming back again. Everything else seemed to be happening just out of reach, beyond that, the only thing able to pass it being the sound of Irene’s screaming, then wailing, then sobbing, then gulping as if choking, then, as if struck by it anew, screaming again.

      In the midst of this, her dad – face set in place, as if made of plaster – quietly set about doing everything that needed doing. He’d cleared the living room of furniture the very next day; it had sat in teetering piles on the landing, half-pushed into his and Irene’s bedroom, a jumble of armchairs and ornaments, settee cushions and pot plants, while he set about the business, Stanley knife in hand, of ripping up and cutting up the heavy, ancient carpet, so that, piece by piece, it could be transported down the stairs and out the back, ready for the bin men, where no one would have to look at it ever again.

      He’d scrubbed the floor – the smell of disinfectant seemed to permeate everywhere – and, in what seemed like no time at all – Monday or Tuesday? – some men he knew with a truck had arrived with a new carpet and had laid it. The new-carpet smell – one she’d once loved – was now lingering, and, though the furniture was back, the ornaments all positioned, it was impossible for Kathleen to even think about going in there, unable to stop pictures forming in her eyes, of Darren’s body, and his hair – of the way it had glistened with blood and bits of brain. The way his head seemed to be sunk into the floor.

      There was a tap on the bathroom door and she started, newly fearful of the animal Irene had now become. Glazed and crazed. Barely functioning. Unpredictable and frightening. While understanding – the unthinkable had happened, she understood that – she was more terrified of her stepmother than ever now. Only yesterday, while seeming outwardly quite calm, she had taken a saucepan full of potatoes and almost boiling water and hurled it at the kitchen wall with such force that it had left a dent. Her dad had come running, and had quietly shepherded Irene out, but the look in her eyes when they chanced upon Kathleen’s had chilled her to the core.

      It was her dad now. ‘Are you nearly ready, love?’ he said. ‘Only the car’s outside in the car park.’

      Kathleen coughed and straightened up. ‘Coming, Dad,’ she said, opening the door. ‘I won’t be a sec.’

      ‘I’ll wait outside for you then, love,’ he said. ‘Your mam and Monica are already in the car, so don’t be long, will you? And make sure you lock the door,’ he added, as he headed back down the stairs. ‘We don’t want a burglary to add to our bloody misery, do we?’

      She watched him go, then ran back into the bedroom for her bag. Trust her dad to be so practical, but then he’d done all this before, hadn’t he? When she was eight.

      It was an odd thing, Kathleen decided, as she took her place opposite her stepmother in the funeral car, to feel sorry for someone you’ve so hated. Well, not so much hated, she supposed, as been so fearful of. She liked to think – she hoped – hate wasn’t something she’d ever harboured. But this new thing – this sympathy, this pity she felt for Irene – was so alien that she didn’t quite know what to do with it.

      What she did know was that Irene seemed to have aged ten years. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like to bring up a child and then lose it, but she had enough intelligence to realise that it was probably a different business to that of a child losing their mother. It was the wrong way round. It was a loss above all others. The stuff of nightmares.

      It certainly seemed so from the way Irene had been. She looked haggard now, desperate, unhinged, without hope; as if she meant what she’d said over and over and over this last week – that she could not bear the pain. That she just wanted to die and be with him.

      Her eyes were red and swollen, her face doughy and grey, and her hair – that thing she most hated, and on which she lavished daily attention – was a cloud of faded amber frizz around her face. It was difficult to even look at her.

      The car took them through streets lined intermittently with people, some there to pay respects, some just to watch the procession – with the schools not gone back yet, there seemed to be children everywhere, too, and Kathleen wondered what thoughts might be going through Irene’s mind, of the little boy she’d raised and had now come to this – moving slowly, in his coffin, just ahead of them.

      It took only ten minutes to get to St Joseph’s Church, but it seemed a great deal longer. Where did you look? How did you act? What did you say? Kathleen had been to her mam’s funeral, and though she could remember few of the details, bar the posy of anemones she’d been given to throw onto the coffin, the sense of horror – of impending chaos, even – had never left her. That fear that, with all the adults behaving so oddly and looking so distressed, anything could, and might, happen.

      Monica, strangely, seemed completely composed. She’d cried little, said little – almost nothing to Kathleen personally. Like Kathleen’s dad, she had rolled her sleeves up and got on with it. It had been Monica who’d rearranged the photos on the mantelpiece, Monica who’d prepared meals, who’d insisted her mother eat a little – on Monday and Tuesday she’d even gone to work, saying that Carol’s pensioners needed doing and couldn’t wait.

      Kathleen wasn’t convinced by her outward composure. She and Darren might not have been that close, but they were still siblings. She’d lost her only brother. Again, Kathleen found herself confused by her own feelings in this; by the genuine respect she currently felt for her stepsister; for the care she was taking of her mother.

      ‘We’re here, Mam,’ Monica said to Irene as the car pulled up outside the church. ‘And I’m right here beside you. Try to stay strong, okay?’

      Irene’s only answer was a blink and a deep shuddering moan; a sound from deep inside her and unlike any Kathleen had ever heard. ‘Come on, lass,’ said her dad, gesturing that she should get out first.

      It was only now, in the light of a glorious late summer morning, that she could see just how tired her dad looked. He’d lost weight from his face, and his body too, she reckoned, though it was difficult to tell under the heavy black suit.

      He’d barely got a breather. They’d closed the pub for two days, out of respect, but after that, on the Tuesday, they’d re-opened. Which meant that as well as sorting out the funeral, the priest, the order of service and everything, he had the usual round of chores still to deal with too.

      Perhaps that was key – to keep busy. They always said that. Keep busy. As with when her mum died, he kept going, kept the smile plastered on his face. Well, not so much the smile, but the control, at least – more often than not, there were few people smiling. It was too much of a tragedy, too much of a waste. That was what everyone said, all the time. ‘What a waste.’ And he’d nod and he’d sigh and he’d keep changing barrels, while Irene stayed curled up on Darren’s bed, howling like a baby – you could sometimes hear it, even with the jukebox on loud. Kathleen could certainly hear it reverberating in her head.

      Her guilt was a tight knot that moved in her stomach.