His voice was wooden. “It was the usual kind of stuff. They’d rip up my books. They’d fuck up my room because they knew how much the mess bothered me. They’d hide Dad’s journals from me.” He took a deep breath. “They’d use Dad’s old belts and take it in turns to hit me with them. They’d laugh the whole time because they were his belts and they’d say it was the same as if he’d done it.”

“That’s not what anyone would call the usual kind of stuff,” Mika said passionately. The sheen of unshed tears in her eyes had turned into a fearsome rage. “And you lived like this for four whole years before you left?”

He shrugged.

“Where was your mother while all this was going on?”

“Dad was the light of her life,” Jamie said. His teeth were clenched so hard, they ached. “My brothers had always been her favourites because they looked just like him. After he died, she fell apart. She was a ghost. She barely got out of bed, barely ate, barely spoke. She couldn’t do anything for me.” He smiled mirthlessly. “The day I came here, Lucie insisted on calling Mum to tell her I was safe. When she got off the phone, she told me Mum sounded relieved that I was gone. I think she knew I was better off.”

“You know that’s massively messed up, right?” Mika said.

He switched lanes, jerking the wheel a little too aggressively. “It wasn’t her fault. She was in pain.”

“So were you. She should have protected you.”

Jamie’s teeth snapped together. He wished he hadn’t said anything. He was too raw for her unrelenting honesty. “She was—”

“Grieving,” Mika finished for him, and the gentleness of her voice was almost worse than her anger. “Heartbroken. Depressed. I do understand that. But—”

“Mika, just stop, okay?”

“You were her family. She had a responsibility to all of you.”

“Remind me,” Jamie heard himself say as if from very far away, his voice low and icy and alien. “What exactly do you know about families?”

It was a knife that went right between her ribs, a thrust that drew blood. And hadn’t he meant it to? Hadn’t he wanted her to bleed the way he was bleeding?

So why, then, did he wish he could take it back?