So that’s what it’s about now. Leaving the past behind; moving forward. We’re all human, with short lives and instincts we have limited control over, and in an ever-changing world, all any of us can do is keep moving forward.

Niamh

No ending is ever perfect. But just occasionally, there is closure.

For a while I thought my mother was having an affair. It was those mysterious phone calls, the shadows under her eyes, her secrecy. But it was the cancer – and everyone in my family has a secret, just as everyone makes mistakes.

‘I’ll fucking kill him, Niamh,’ Hollie had sobbed the night she showed me the letter my father had written to her mother. ‘I hate him. He killed Dylan …’ Her voice grew more high-pitched with every word, until she fled, distraught, into the darkness. Running from pain there was no escape from, towards a future that, like Dylan, she didn’t want.

Everyone noticed Hollie was at breaking point, but only I was the holder of her secret, the one who had the power to ruin lives.

‘There’s no point, Hollie,’ I’d tried to convince her. ‘You don’t know what he’s like. He’ll hurt you. He hurts everyone. Don’t tell him. Believe me, you don’t want him in your life.’

*

She persuaded me, against my will, to go with her that day, climbing over the fence into the gardens of Park House. ‘Can’t we go somewhere else?’ I asked.

But she ignored me. ‘Come on! I want to show you something!’ She started marching towards a gap in the hedge. Reluctantly, I followed her through into a rectangular area away from the house, surrounded by tall hedges and carpeted in fallen leaves. Bending down to pick something up, Hollie grabbed my arm. ‘Listen.’

She threw something into the middle of the leaves. After a couple of seconds, there was a loud splash as it hit water. ‘The pool.’

I shrank back against the hedge. With all the leaves, it was impossible to tell where the ground ended and the water started.

Around us, the wind was picking up, the sky a shade of yellow under clouds that had blotted out the last of the sun. ‘I want him to suffer.’ Her voice was murderous. Then, stretching out her arms, she spun around in circles. ‘I want everyone to know what he’s done. My dad, first … Then your mum.’

‘No.’ My cry was drowned by the sound of the wind, as I felt anger rip through me. I’d kept everything to myself for so long, protecting my mother from what really happened. Growing up, I’d had to watch her suffer so many times at the hands of my father. And now Hollie had the power to make everything a million times worse. ‘It’ll destroy her.’

‘What about me?’ Her face was pale under a sliver of the new moon.