Page 15 of Hide In The House

‘I never thought I’d get out of that place,’ he says.

‘You could have left at any time,’ I remind him, but he shakes his head.

‘No, I couldn’t,’ he corrects me. ‘Not without your help. I’d be dead in a week without it. You know that.’

Maybe I do, which is why I don’t say anything.

‘So, what’s the plan now?’ Kirk asks me as we start walking.

‘We use some of the money I stole to buy plane tickets, then we go to the airport and get the hell out of here,’ I say. ‘As discussed, we can go somewhere sunny. I was thinking Greece.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Kirk says. ‘As long as it’s far away from here.’

We continue walking in silence for a little while, but it’s not awkward. Rather, it’s the shared silence that only two people who have spent many, many years together are comfortable enough to engage in. But like all silences, eventually it is broken, and this one ceases when Kirk asks me a serious question.

‘Do you think Mum and Dad will ever come looking for us?’ he asks me as the sun briefly disappears behind a cloud, casting the two of us into lesser light.

‘I doubt it,’ is all I say to that, figuring that’s better than telling him the truth. Sure, my brother might be happy to know that there is zero chance our alcoholic, abusive and adulterous parents will come looking for us, but he doesn’t need to know why.

He doesn’t need to know they are both dead after I saw them die in the home we once shared as a family.

He can just carry on thinking they don’t care and that is simple to do because they have never cared. Not like proper parents should. All they ever cared about was where the next drink was coming from and how long they could get away with doing things they shouldn’t.

Their genetics made my brother an alcoholic who needed saving.

Just like their genetics made me capable of criminality and deception.

Breaking into the house I used to live in before I became estranged from my parents was easy. Watching my parents die was harder, but still not difficult. But the hardest part of all will be evading the questions from the police when they discover that our parents are dead and their two children are nowhere to be seen.

The best way I can think of to evade any questions is for me and my brother to make ourselves hard to find.

We’ll have to hide.

I think I can manage that.