Page 97 of Spiralling Skywards
“I’m glad you’re home for Christmas this year. I’ve missed you.”
He stood and brushed his hands down his jeans.
“I’ve missed you, too.”
I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around his waist. I was barefoot and felt tiny up against his six-foot-four frame.
“I know travelling and working abroad was a dream come true for you Luke and I’m glad you got to do it, but the selfish side of me is so glad that you’re here, especially this year.”
He kissed the top of my head and I let out a long breath, one that it felt like I’d been holding in for weeks. I was hurting, but I hadn’t realised exactly how much until that moment. Until I was wrapped in the safety of my big brother’s arms.
“When I left, I wasn’t leaving you, Sunshine. I need you to know that.”
I had my ear pressed against his lower chest and could hear his words rumble through him.
“I do know that. I’ve never thought that you did.”
He let out a long breath.
“And I never meant to stay away for so long. I never planned it that way.”
I looked up at him, but he wasn’t looking down at me, he was looking at the fire.
“I’ve never thought for a minute that you deliberately stayed away, but after everything that happened with Mel, I sort of got why you didn’t come back.”
I watched as he shook his head.
“It wasn’t even about her really. I was just . . .”
He finally looked down at me.
“I love you, I’d lie down my life for you, you know that right?”
My eyes filled with tears and my throat felt tight, all I could do was nod.
“I wouldn’t change anything about our lives. I don’t want you thinking I wished things were different, because I don’t. I just, I had to get away. I needed to travel, to go and do something for me. My entire life up until that point had been spent looking after other people.”
He brushed a tear from my cheek with his thumb.
“I’d looked after mum from the moment I was of an age to realise she needed to be looked after. Then I looked after you pretty much from the moment she brought you home from the hospital.”
We rarely talked about the time before our mother’s death. It was as if our childhoods didn’t begin until we moved in with our grandparents. It was easy for me to forget Luke was around eleven by then.
“I had to make a choice. She was an adult, a fucking grown up, and you . . .”
He scratched at the top of his head, it wasn’t itchy, not really. I knew he was just trying to get his words in order.
“You were this little tiny, innocent baby. I had no choice really. I was seven years old, about to turn eight, I tried to look after both of you for a little while, but I couldn’t do it. I tried to look after her, to make sure she ate and showered, and I tried to make sure that you were fed and changed. I gave you baths, and I put clean clothes on you.”
He laughed through his tears, although there was nothing funny in what he was saying, nothing at all. He was a child, a little boy. He’d stepped up and done the job that our father, an adult, had run away from.
I don’t like to think of my childhood as tragic, I was lucky, I was too young to remember the worst times but Luke wasn’t. Luke was old enough to remember it all, and my heart broke for him.
“I even did the washing so you would have clean clothes to wear. When she wouldn’t or couldn’t get up off the sofa or out of bed, I worked out how to use the machine, and I washed our clothes, but I bought the wrong soap powder the first time. I was a little boy, I had no clue there was a difference between hand and machine wash powders. There were bubbles everywhere. She ended up having a good day that day. She came out into the kitchen and slipped on the tiles while I was trying to clean up with a towel. She knew . . . she knew straight away what had happened, and she laughed. She called me over, sat me in her lap, and told me she loved me.”
My heart, oh my poor heart, ached so fiercely for my brother as he almost choked on his words.
“She told me I was a good kid and thanked me for trying to help. We cleaned up the kitchen together, and then she ran down to the corner shop and bought the right soap powder before showing me how to sort the colours. We did the washing and hung it all out on the line together. I thought it was the best thing ever. When we got it in and had it all folded into piles, one for each of us, it felt like Christmas.”
