He crouches next to Julia and touches her face. “Tess,” he says, looking up at me. “Go and get your dad.”

My legs are shaking as I go to Dad’s room, shaking his shoulder. He opens his eyes and looks at me, but he doesn’t ask anything. I think he knows.

Dad sits in the chair next to her bed, Sean on the other side, me standing behind Dad. Her breathing has become shallower and there seems to be an endless gap between breaths.

“Shall I call the doctor?” I whisper.

Dad shakes his head. “There’s nothing he can do. We just have to…”

Wait.

Julia opens her eyes and looks at Dad. The morphine glaze seems to have gone, she looks at him and she’s fully there, the Julia who moved into this house more than twelve years ago, with her bright red hair and her loud, loud laugh.

God, she had a good laugh. She woke the house up. She woke us all up. I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time resenting her at the beginning. I wish I hadn’t left her room angry just now. There’s no more time to apologize, to explain, to ask. Dad is holding her hand; he leans forward to kiss it, to kiss her cheek and smooth back her hair.

We wait.

The gaps between breaths become longer. There’s a lump in my throat, a growing quiet panic in my stomach. No, not yet, not yet, not again. But I can’t will her to breathe harder, to breathe faster, I can’t will her heart to keep beating, and at three twenty-six in the morning Julia dies.

Sean buries his head in his hands, Dad keeps stroking her hair and whispering things I can’t hear, and, behind him, I swallow down the lump in my throat but I can’t stop the tears from falling, hot and fast down my cheeks and I’m so sorry I wasn’t here more, I’m so sorry I didn’t get to hear that bloody great laugh of hers more.

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Lena brings the vodka. We sit in a row on the fallen tree in the clearing in the woods where Bella and I were found and she passes the bottle along from her to Max, to Jack to Sean to me. Julia’s funeral is tomorrow. I came out here alone. I came here looking for Bella but she wasn’t here. I don’t know how long I sat on this tree before the others arrived. Not together. Sean first, sitting next to me without a word. Max and Lena then, Lena swinging her bottle, and finally Jack, who wasn’t there when his mother died, who’s barely said a word since.