Page 93 of Almost Ours

Bonnie reaches out and brushes my hair off my head. “You look tired, Josh.”

My mouth drops open and I shove her hand away. “Are you fucking alright?”

She pulls her hand back slowly, eyes scanning my face. “You always get that crease in your eyebrows when you’re knackered.”

“You don’t know me anymore.”

“You’re in a bad mood. Is it because she’s over there?”

“No. It’s because you’re talking to me.”

Bonnie sighs. “You’re blaming me for the wrong things, Josh.”

Rage slams into me. “I’m not doing this shit here.”

“Fine,” she snaps, roughly shoving her hair back and straightening her spine. “At least tell me if you’re going to his memorial at the end of January?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “This has got to be some sick game.”

“You didn’t go to the last one—”

“And you did?” I demand, feeling like a poisonous snake whose head has been cut off, writhing around on the floor, hissing and bleeding out. “You still go to them?”

She nods. “Yeah. Every single one.”

I close my eyes. “I can’t do this.”

“Josh.” Her voice is horribly soft, so much like the girl I grew up with. The one that I trusted and loved. “You have very valid reasons to hate me,” she pushes on, trying to force me into a conversation I never want to have. “I won’t deny that. I betrayed you deeply and I know it. But do you not think I’m the one person who can explain things you never knew about him? Tell you what he was thinking—”

I shove away from the booth so fast my knee catches the underside of the table and several drinks jump against the wood. Cam stops mid-sentence, Oscar turns towards me and Ewan’s expression changes as soon as he sees who is next to me. The whole pub is too loud and suddenly I can smell hay that isn’t fucking there, hear the snap of rope, feel the weight of his cold and lifeless body. “Josh?” Ewan’s voice is laced with concern.

I’m too much of a coward to even glance his way. “I need air.” I shoulder through the crowd towards the door, past people laughing with their mouths wide open, and by the time I get outside I’m dragging breath in so hard it hurts.

I think I’m going to be sick.

James would have fucking hated all these memorials they keep throwing him, the ones they insist I arrive at because it maintains our family image.

James hated being the centre of attention unless he’d chosen it himself. He’d have taken the piss out of the photographs Mum chooses, complained that half of them were hideous and asked why nobody had picked the one from Spain where he thought his abs were decent. He would have stood at the back making inappropriate comments until I laughed during somebody’s speech and Dad got furious with both of us.

Except he won’t.

Because it’s his memorial.

And my brother will always be dead.

My lungs refuse to fill at the right speed. I brace both hands against the metal railing bordering the pavement and tip my head towards the ground, trying to concentrate on the wet concrete beneath my trainers rather than James, Bonnie, Dad, Mum, Bonnie’s mum, that fucking barn, any of it.

I don’t want to go to another memorial.

I don’t want to stand beside my parents while people tell me how brilliant my brother was.

I know he was brilliant. I knew which cereal he ate first out of those variety packs because we used to fight over the Coco Pops. I knew he hated sleeping with socks on and always left them trapped inside the bottom of the duvet. I knew he couldn’t whisper to save his fucking life, cheated at Monopoly and used my razor even though he had his own.

I knew him alive. I don’t need another room full of people telling me about him dead.

The pub door opens behind me, and footsteps cross the paving stones. “Josh?”

I shut my eyes.