‘You wouldn’t understand. You couldn’t.’

‘You’re right, and I don’t pretend to. But you deserve to live, Lily. None of that was your fault.’

‘I chose the restaurant!’ I shouted at him, roughly brushing away the tears with the side of my hand. ‘So it was my fault. If we’d been anywhere else, none of it would have happened. It was all my fault!’

‘You can’t think like that,’ Jack replied, his tone earnest. ‘It was nobody’s fault. It was just a horrible set of circumstances in which you were caught up. You can’t go through life blaming yourself. And no, I didn’t know Mike well, but I saw the way he looked at you, and having seen that, I know he wouldn’t want you to feel any of that either. You have to let it go, Lily. You have to let that guilt go.’

I walked up to Jack, tilted my head up until I could meet his eyes and addressed him quietly, but with cold steel in my voice. ‘You don’t get to tell me what to do.’

With that, I turned and walked out of the kitchen, headed straight up to my room, and locked the door.

Rolling over, I looked at the clock. Half past two. Having left the kitchen, I’d changed into my pyjamas and gone straight to bed, tears still streaming over the row with Jack plus all the memories it had unearthed. I hated arguing with him, but I stood by what I said. Deep down, I knew he had my best interests at heart, at least he thought he did. I’d spent a long time on my own, and maybe I was a little out of practise at the whole compromise thing. I’d had no one else to really consider for the past ten years and, until now, Jack had been pretty easy going. Until now, he hadn’t really dived into my private life. Nobody had. That had been locked away for so many years. I hadn’t even told my brother the things that I had shouted at Jack tonight. I’d known that, for Felix, hearing something like that at an already difficult time would have been painful for him, and they had done so much for me. Perhaps Jack had a point when he said that I put barriers up. I never used to. But things happen and people change. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to feel love, only that I couldn’t bear the loss of it ever again. In my heart, I knew this solitude wasn’t an ideal solution, but it was the only way I could see for getting through it at the time and over the years it had just become a habit.

I fidgeted in the bed and my stomach growled, reminding me that I’d stormed off before eating any of the dinner I’d prepared. Jack had called through the door at one point, suggesting that I should eat something, but I ignored him and he soon went away. However, as my stomach made another loud grumble, it appeared that the hunger pangs were less easily dismissed.