“It was a Sunday when my brother died. He was coming out of the sweetshop and I didn’t hold his hand. I was angry because he’d been whining for more sweets than I had money for and he had kicked me for saying so.
I was ten and he was five, I was responsible for him.
I didn’t hold his hand. Therefore it was my fault that he wandered off of the pavement and into the road. My fault that he was hit by a white van.
There was no blood. To this day I still wonder why that is. He looked so peaceful lying there, like he had just fallen asleep and I only had to shake his shoulder to wake him. If it wasn’t for the screams of the eye witness’ and the sudden stillness of all life around me, I would have shaken him and told him to stop playing games.
It was not a game.
I went with him to hospital. Then my mother and my father turned up. When they broke the news that he was dead I wasn’t shocked. I had known from the moment I heard the sirens. No, if I was being honest I had known from the moment he was hit by the van.
…What? Why do I say this in such a matter-of-fact way? Well, he’s dead. What more can I say? It was my fault that he lies six feet under the ground, his body cold…no, his skeleton white and gleaming, in a box the size of a suitcase.
He still lies there now, three years on. Mum still cries, dad still works. His picture is still up on the mantelpiece, frozen forever at the age of five.
…Me? I am just another troubled teen that can’t get over the past. And you? You are another failed psychiatrist that cheats my family out of hundreds of pounds per session.
Can I go now?”