Page 49 of Almost Ours

“Joshua." He says my name the same way he always does. Flat. Polite. Like we're colleagues who happened to answer the same conference call. "Just checking you've settled in. Your mother asked me to."

My mother could call me herself. "Yeah."

"And everything is in order?"

"Mmhm."

"So... you're fine?"

"Yep. I'm fine." Do I have any other choice?

"You haven't had one of your episodes yet?"

I close my eyes and suck in a calming breath. "You mean am I feeling depressed?"

He tuts. "You're still calling it that, are you? Depression?" A sigh crackles down the line. "You're eighteen now, Joshua. At some point you have to stop indulging it. You have to grow up."

I open my eyes and fight to keep my tone neutral. "What do you need, Dad?”

"I can tell you're in a mood."

Oh, fuck off. You egregious prick. “Am I?”

“Yes. You are. You know I won’t talk to you when you’re like this.”

“Like what?”

“This. All moody and emotional. It’s exhausting.”

I bow my head. “Sorry.”

“For the love of God. Please try and remember you’re there to get a degree, Joshua. Nothing else.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“It was hard enough after you gave up Oxford. Oxford! Josh, who does that? Don’t start fucking around whilst you’re there.”

“I understand.”

“I expect you to keep your head down and not make any more bad decisions.”

I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from screaming down the phone.

The cheek of him.

I don't make poor decisions. I've never been arrested, never touched drugs, never been thrown out of school or wrapped my car around a tree because I was pissed behind the wheel. My one bad decision was being so wracked with grief after James, I turned down Oxford and deferred a year. That’s it. That’s all I did. But nothing has ever been good enough for them.

I spent years doing everything I was supposed to do. I convinced myself that if I could just become enough of the son they wanted, enough like James, they'd stop hating me. And that if I shrunk myself after he died, they’d stop looking at me like the wrong twin survived.

They never did.

Dad hasn't said it since the funeral, but he doesn't have to. The words are layered into every single conversation we have, woven into every careful question about my mental state and every reminder not to embarrass the family.

If you weren't so emotionally volatile, this family wouldn't have been ripped apart.

He'd stood in our kitchen while Mum cried so hard she could barely breathe and delivered the sentence as calmly as if he were discussing the weather. She never told him he was wrong. She never looked at me at all.

My parents blame me for my twin’s suicide.