Blood Ties: Family is not always a place of safety. Julie Shaw

all seemed so obvious now. She should never have said anything to him. She should have told her dad and let him decide what was best to do. If she’d only done that, then might he still be alive? But what could she do now? Tell her dad after all and get it off her chest? But what was the point? What would he be able to do? No, she’d done the wrong thing and there was nothing she could do to change it. She desperately wished she could talk to Terry.

      Irene began wailing as she made the unsteady walk from car to church, the same animal sound she’d been making since the night Darren had died, as if she’d discovered a language that no one else could share. Kathleen walked behind her, Monica and her dad holding Irene between them, having to physically support her. Had they let her go, it was clear that she’d simply collapse, and lay keening on the gravel between their feet.

      As they walked slowly up the aisle, the church more packed than she’d ever seen it, she could see that the length of one of the front pews was clear, ready to receive them. The organist was already playing – ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ – and it was that, together with seeing the photograph of Darren sitting on a low table, next to where the coffin would be placed, that caused Kathleen to shed her first tears of another day. She was suddenly overcome with grief, in fact – not just for the loss of Darren, which still overwhelmed her, but also for the loss of her own mother. It might have been almost a decade since her mam died, but it suddenly felt as if she was right there, again – the terrible loss of her all rushing back.