Chapter 22
I was torn between feeling besotted and envious. Jonah’s younger brother and sister had come over and it was revealing a whole different side to the vampire.
After playfighting with four-year-old Billy for a while, he was now sitting at the coffee table with Ellis, helping her make a bracelet. Mum was reading Billy a story, although she kept stopping and glancing over at Jonah and Ellis as though seeing them together was mashing her heart into a squidgy mess. I knew how she felt. Ellis was chattering to her big brother the whole time she was picking out each bead and threading it onto elastic. He was watching and listening with the tender focus of someone trying to absorb every millisecond, knowing that all too soon he’d have to revert to relying on memories.
After a few minutes, Ellis rested her head against Jonah’s shoulder, and he instinctively wrapped his arm around her, moving across to tuck her against his chest as she carried on building the bracelet.
‘Did you miss me?’ she asked, scanning the beads.
I was pretending to read, curled up in a chair in the corner of the room, but it was impossible not to listen in.
‘Every second.’
‘As much as last time?’
He squeezed his eyes closed. ‘More.’
‘I wish I could come and live here with you.’
‘Here?’ Jonah asked gently. ‘Not back home with Mum?’
Ellis froze. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, hesitantly.
Her brother gently took the bead gripped between her fingers and slipped it onto the bracelet. ‘That’s okay. It’s a big decision.’
‘Do you think Mummy misses us?’
He took a deep breath. ‘Yes. But that doesn’t mean we should go back.’
‘Clare said she’s poorly and that’s why she didn’t take care of us very well.’
‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Jonah muttered, before picking up a flower bead. ‘Here. How about this one?’
‘I think Mummy will like that one. Do you think she will? I’m giving her the bracelet when it’s all finished so she can wear it and won’t miss me so much. Clare said we’re going to see her after playing here. Are you coming? Billy is, but he isn’t making her a bracelet because he’s not big enough.’
Jonah’s features had set like stone. ‘No. I’m not coming.’
He turned to my mum, eyes like lasers. ‘They’re going to see her?’
Mum screwed up her face in sympathy. ‘Clare didn’t tell you?’
Clare was the children’s social worker. She’d spoken to Jonah in his bedroom while Mum and I played with the younger kids.
‘No. She asked if I wanted any contact, and I said no. Obviously. How can they let the kids see her?’
The doorbell rang.
‘Libby, that’ll be Clare. Can you answer it, please?’
I missed whatever conversation happened while I was letting Clare in, waiting for her to take her shoes off and faff about with a raincoat, but by the time she walked into the living room, Jonah was a ball of furious protest, sitting on the floor with both the kids pressed tightly against him.
‘They aren’t going.’
‘Jonah,’ Clare said calmly. ‘Believe me, I understand your concerns, but they’ll be closely supervised at our family centre. Warren won’t be there.’
‘You think that’ll make any difference? Isn’t the whole point of being taken into care so she can’t ruin our lives even more?’
‘You’re welcome to come along and see for yourself.’
‘She tried to have me arrested for protecting my sister from that mutant she pretends is our dad. What part of that don’t you people get? If I see that witch the day I kill myself, it’ll be too soon.’
Ellis started to cry. Billy was like a baby ghost, peeping over the top of his brother’s elbow.
‘That’s your choice. But I’m sorry, you don’t get to choose whether Billy and Ellis spend time with their mother. Like I said, it’s in a supervised?—’
‘You can shove your supervised family centre?—’
‘Jonah,’ Mum said, gently. ‘Why don’t we go into the kitchen and talk about this properly?’
‘So she can sneak them out the door the second I’m out the room? I’m not going anywhere.’
His eyes were wild, his breathing heavy. I was used to seeing young people dysregulated, but this was clearly upsetting his siblings.
I walked up to them, crouching low enough to put a hand on Jonah’s shoulder. ‘You’re scaring Ellis and Billy,’ I whispered, my eyes flicking to where they were clutching onto him, then back to meet his again.
He glanced down, frowning when he realised how tightly he was gripping onto them.
Slowly, he dropped his arms, but the children still knelt there, pressed up against his waist until Mum came and took hold of their hands.
‘Let’s find a snack while Clare talks to your brother.’
But before Clare could say anything, Jonah had barged past her, thundering up the stairs and slamming his bedroom door.
‘I’ll talk to him once he’s calm enough to listen.’ Mum smiled as though this was all in a day’s work, which it often was.
While Ellis and Billy were putting on their shoes, she knocked on Jonah’s door and tried to persuade him to come and say goodbye, but he simply turned up the volume of his thrashy, angry music.
I waited ten minutes, until a softer, more depressing song came on, then made two mugs of coffee, placing them on the floor outside his door then tentatively tapping on it.
When he didn’t reply, I decided to be brave.
‘It’s Libby. I brought you a drink.’
The door opened while I was still bending down to retrieve the mugs.
‘I thought you might want some company.’
He stared at me, his expression impossible to interpret.
I nodded at my shorts. ‘There’s a Wagon Wheel in each pocket.’
‘You aren’t allowed in my room.’
‘Mum’s gone to pick up Nicky from her friend’s in Middlebeck, so no one will know. But…’ I shocked myself by giving him a sidelong glance from beneath my lashes ‘…if you’re that much of a stickler for the rules we could sit on the landing.’
His mouth twitched as he stepped back to let me in.
‘Ooh, I like what you’ve done with the place.’ I waded into the absolute pit of mess while trying not to breathe in the stench of teenage boy and dried-up food.
‘Yeah, well. I wasn’t expecting company.’ He shrugged, kicking a pair of boxers under his bed while appearing disarmingly sheepish.
‘To be honest, mine isn’t much better.’
‘I’ll keep things tidier in future.’
I smirked as I handed over one coffee. ‘Four sugars. Does that mean you’re expecting me to come back?’
He quirked his eyebrow in a way that made my heart flip over. Stubbornly ignoring my brain’s frantic questions about what the hell I was doing in Jonah’s bedroom, I instead took a sip of my drink and perched on the corner of his bed.
‘The court makes kids keep seeing their parent until the final decision’s made about where they’ll live, in case they end up going back home.’
Jonah was leaning against the desk. He paused with the mug a few inches away from his mouth. ‘They aren’t going back. That isn’t our home any more. The witch has made it clear she’s choosing Warren over her kids.’
‘Yeah, but it’s the judge who ultimately decides.’
He ran a hand over his face. ‘I know exactly what Mum will be saying to Ellis and Billy. How she’ll twist things, mess with their heads so they want to go back.’
‘The contact worker will intervene if she does. These professionals can tell which parents genuinely want to change and who’ll pretend to agree to anything to get their kids back. They won’t be fooled if your mum is lying.’
He shook his head. ‘She’s fooled them enough times before.’
‘Yeah, but this time you aren’t protecting her.’
He sank down onto the bed next to me. ‘The judge can’t make them go back, can they?’ he asked, in barely a whisper.
I slipped my hand into his, and he gripped it tightly. I’d seen this scenario enough times not to lie to him about it.
After a brief silence, he nudged me with his elbow.
‘Thanks, by the way. For snapping me out of it, before. I know I can be scary when I lose it. The kids are used to me. But, I don’t know. It’s different, here.’
‘I’m not scared of you.’
I’d tried to sound light-hearted but instead the words hung in the room like a cloud.
‘Really?’ He let out a trembling laugh. ‘I’m terrified of you.’
I was trying to pluck up the courage to ask him about the songs he’d been playing in the car, when the front door banged shut.
As Mum called hello up the stairs I dropped Jonah’s hand and sprang towards the door.
‘Here.’ He pressed the empty mugs into my hand, bending down to meet my panicked eyes. ‘You were bringing me a coffee. It’s fine. No big deal.’
In one smooth motion he opened the door, bundled me out and closed it again.
It cracked open an inch while I was still standing there, collecting myself.
‘My door’s always open. I mean, metaphorically. Even if it isn’t, like, literally open,’ he said, his face hidden from sight.
‘Maybe try opening a window, too,’ I whispered over my shoulder, before skidding down the stairs.
‘There you are,’ Mum said, appearing at the kitchen door. ‘Are you okay?’
I worked hard to keep my smile subdued, my tone indifferent. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Phew. Just checking.’
Nothingabout this was okay. Least of all me.
I wrote it all down in my journal that night…
I’m upside down and inside out and have no idea who I am any more.
I don’t know what’s going to happen or how this will end.
I know that I can’t stop. And even if I could, I don’t want to.
If this is falling in love, I want to keep on falling forever.