A hush descended as a tall, skinny man stepped into the living room.
He looked scruffy, like a student who’d spent the night in his clothes. His soft-soled shoes made barely a sound on the hardwood floor. He didn’t look at Mr or Mrs Webb – it seemed as if he hadn’t even noticed them. Instead, he walked straight over to Beth and me and looked down at us.
We didn’t move, just sat frozen, waiting for someone to speak. To explain.
It felt hard to breathe, as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room.
For a second or two, there was just silence. My stomach churned, a horrible sick feeling creeping in, like I’d done something wrong but didn’t know what. Beside me, Beth twisted her fingers together in her lap, her eyes darting around nervously.
The man finally spoke, his voice sharp and nasal. ‘Who have we got here, then? Are you the two little orphan girls?’
I scrambled for something polite to say, but my mind was blank. I glanced at Mr and Mrs Webb, silently begging them for some kind of guidance, anything to tell me how to react. Ididn’t want to ruin things here. They’d taken us in, kept Beth and me together. I couldn’t mess it up for her sake.
Mrs Webb finally spoke. ‘Janey, Beth … this is our son, David.’
A jolt ran through me.Thiswas David junior? Mr Webb had mentioned a son in passing but now here he was, tall and looming. A fully grown man.
‘Hmm,’ David muttered, his eyes sweeping over us. His gaze lingered on Beth, who hugged herself tightly. Then his eyes fixed on me. ‘Nice to meet you, Janey and Beth,’ he said, dragging out our names slowly. ‘I’m looking forward to getting to know you both.’
Mrs Webb put down her cup so hard, I thought the saucer might crack.
Over the next few days, I realized this was the big change Mr Webb had mentioned. Their son was moving home.
I learned that David was twenty-five and had been at university studying a science degree – something I couldn’t even pronounce. Now he was home again.
I overheard Mrs Webb telling the neighbours how proud she was of him. ‘Such a bright young man, our David,’ she said, ‘with a brilliant future ahead of him.’
But inside the house, it was a different story. A few times, I heard Mr and Mrs Webb arguing when David wasn’t around.
‘How long is he planning to live here rent-free?’ Mr Webb snapped. ‘When’s he going to get a job? He’s bad news. Always has been.’
When David was home, he followed Beth and me around. Not constantly, but often enough to make me feel uneasy, bringing back memories of Mum’s boyfriends.
Sometimes David said nothing, just stood there watching, listening to everything we said. But I preferred that to his questions.
‘Why didn’t your parents want you?’ he asked one evening, while I was drying the dishes. His voice was casual, as if he were asking about the weather.
My hands trembled and the plates clattered against each other. I stared at the floor, unsure how to answer.
‘Dad died when Beth was a baby,’ I said eventually, keeping my voice low so Beth wouldn’t hear from the other room. ‘Then Mum passed away about eighteen months ago.’
David raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, yes, that’s right. Alcohol poisoning, wasn’t it? Maybe she felt she didn’t have anything worthwhile to live for.’ He shrugged, then added with a smirk, ‘She mustn’t have noticed how pretty and clever you girls were getting – that would’ve given her a reason to stick around.’
He smiled then, but it wasn’t a kind smile. It was sharp and sly, like he was daring me to react. I wanted to snap back, to say something clever and cutting, but my throat tightened, and I nodded, pretending I hadn’t heard him properly.
I quickly learned that this was the game David liked to play. He’d get me alone, then push me until I was on the edge of tears or ready to flee the room, then change tack. He’d say something kind or make a joke that almost made me laugh, and for a moment, I’d think maybe I’d misjudged him.
But the next time, the cruel questions would return, and the tightness in my chest would creep back.
Once, I thought about telling Mrs Webb. I almost did. But I’d seen the way her face lit up whenever she looked at David. She laughed at his jokes, even when they weren’t funny.
Mr Webb, on the other hand, said very little when David was around, but he never actually asked him about getting a job.
It felt like there had been a seismic shift inside the family home and we were all just waiting for David to decide exactly how things would run from now on.
Until the awful thing happened.
It was raining heavily, the kind of storm that darkened the sky even in the middle of the day. I was in my bedroom, staring out of the window, listening to the rain lash against the glass, when I heard a big crash from below.
