“Will you tell me what happened?” I asked quietly, my voice muffled because my face was still pressed against his hard back.

“Ellie, what difference does it make? He killed her so I killed him, that’s all there is to it,” he mumbled.

I shook my head and moved in front of him, not letting him out of the cage that I’d made with my arms, I didn’t want him to run away and clam up again. He just needed to let me past his boundaries. “That’s not all there is to it, there’s more, much more, I can tell. Please? I love you, Jamie, I want to help you and it’s not good for you to keep all that stuff bottled up inside you, you’ll go crazy,” I whispered, gripping my hands on the back of his shirt as I tried to look in his eyes, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. “You can talk to me. You can tell me anything,” I encouraged.

He gulped and closed his eyes. There was a tightness to his mouth that I longed to kiss away and make him smile again. I hated to see him so sad and defeated. “Fine,” he finally sighed, his arms dropping to his sides as he gripped my wrists and unwrapped my arms from his waist. “Let’s go sit down then or something.” He didn’t wait for me as he let go of my hands and stalked away into the lounge.

I took a couple of deep breaths and looked at the ceiling, willing myself not to cry. I had a feeling that me being upset was going to make this whole thing harder for him to get through, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to hold it together indefinitely. When my fried nerves seemed to be under control, I turned and followed after him into the lounge. I just about had time to notice that the room was bare apart from a few things scattered here and there. He’d already put most of his stuff into storage, all he had left out was his clothes and what came with the apartment when he rented it, the room looked so empty.

I chewed on my lip as my gaze settled on him. He’d sat on the sofa, his shoulders slumped, his head in his hands. My weary legs carried me over to him and I plopped down in the space next to him, looking at him sympathetically. I didn’t know what to say or do to make him feel better so I stayed silent. It wasn’t long before he started talking.

“My dad died when I was two, so it was always just me and my mum on our own. Things were hard on her, she had no qualifications or anything so she started sleeping with guys for money. She’d bring them back to the house and I’d get locked in my room so that I couldn’t interrupt or anything.

I didn’t really know what was going on at the time, it was only as I got older that I realised what she was doing,” he said, cringing, his hands fisting in his hair. “She got pregnant. I don’t know who Sophie’s dad was; no one ever stuck around so I assume it was one of her clients.”

His eyes flicked to me and I tried to keep my expression neutral even though I was crying on the inside. His voice was so full of pain already that it was hurting me to listen to it. I nodded encouragingly. I wanted to take his hand but my body was frozen in place, just waiting for the rest of it. My eyes flicked to one of his scars on his neck, you could only just see it under the collar of his t-shirt. Silently I wondered how it got there, how he got all of the marks that were on his body.

“I was seven when she was born and from that day I had to grow up quickly. My mom, she never bonded with Soph, she never held her for longer than necessary, never smiled at her. Even at the age of seven I knew something was wrong so I tried to be the best brother in the world so that it’d make up for the fact that my mom never seemed to want to be in the same room as her.”

I gulped and tried not to hate his mom but the more he spoke the more I wondered how a person such as her could birth an amazing person like Jamie.

“I used to play with her all the time, feed her and change her and stuff. I made it into a kind of game, and we got through it. When Soph was about one, things got worse. My mom started taking drugs; I didn’t know that was the reason for the change at the time but looking back on it now I think she was addicted to cocaine.” He blew out a big breath and shook his head. “That was about the time that she kind of forgot she even had two kids. She was barely home in the nights or weekends, I was eight and I’d be left home alone with Sophie. She’d forget to buy food, or she’d not have the money for it because she’d wasted the food money on drugs. During the week I used to get Sophie dressed and give her breakfast, then I’d put her in her crib and go to school. When I’d come home she’d still be in there, her diaper dirty where I hadn’t been there to change it.

Sometimes her bum would get so sore that it would bleed and I wouldn’t know what to do about it.

Know what though? She didn’t even cry when she was left in there all day. It was kind of like she knew that no one would come and get her so she never bothered. The whole time my mom would just be passed out on the sofa or working.”

“Oh God, Jamie,” I mumbled. My eyes prickled with tears imagining an eight year old boy trying to be a dad to a one year old baby while his mom spent their money on drugs. It was horrifying.

He smiled weakly, still not meeting my eyes. “I was eight and a half when I first broke the law,” he stated. “I went to the local store and I stole a loaf of bread and a lump of cheese so that I could feed my baby sister.” He hung his head as if he was ashamed to admit that or something.

The lump in my throat seemed to get bigger as I struggled to swallow. Suddenly my body seemed to thaw out and I could move. I scooted closer to him on the sofa and put my hand on the back of his head, resting my chin on his shoulder, looking at the ceiling so that the tears wouldn’t fall. His body was trembling against mine and I realised that I’d never hated anyone as much as I hated his mother for letting him go through all of that. He’d never even had a childhood. There was most people at eight years old probably having a strop because they wanted the latest GI Joe, but the eight year old Jamie was stealing food to feed himself and his sister.