The Marriage by K.L. Slater (any book recommendations TXT) 📕

threw her arms around him. ‘I know it’s unfair, I know it’s a terrible, terrible thing that’s happened, but it isn’t Tom’s fault, love.’ She pressed him close to her and he began to sob uncontrollably.

Tom took a step towards them both, but Ellis felt her gently shake her head and he backed off.

Ellis tried to pull himself together. He was nine years old now, he had to man up, as he was always telling the younger kids at school when they couldn’t take the name-calling. But this was his mum … his beautiful, kind mum. She was gone forever and the pain was everywhere inside him. He was full of it, and there was no escape. It was as if his blood had turned to burning oil, the hurt seeping into every millimetre of his body.

‘I can’t bear to see you both like this.’ Tom threw his arms in the air and then clutched his head with both hands. ‘I want to hold you, look after you.’

Ellis decided, if Tom came anywhere near him, he’d kick him in the nuts. Tom was good at pretending he cared, but underneath, he probably hated him. Ellis had heard the way he’d spoken to his mum that day, and he wouldn’t forget it.

He pulled away from Bridget and headed for his room.

‘Ellis?’ she called after him.

‘Leave me alone.’ He stumbled through his bedroom door and slammed it behind him.

Tom was always there in the house and the creepiest thing was that he often watched Ellis slyly. It usually happened when Tom thought he was engrossed in his game. He’d stare at him and Ellis thought it might be because he reminded him of Jesse.

What if Tom was secretly thinking he’d like to kill him too? What if he crept into his bedroom when his nan was sleeping and slit his throat? Then he’d be dead like his mum and dad.

Ellis had heard people talk about feeling empty inside. Adults said it a lot, both in real life and on TV. He’d even heard his nan tell his mum a few years ago – when they thought he wasn’t listening – that before he was born, she’d felt like she wanted to die because there was nothing left to live for. It had been after his dad had been murdered by Tom.

Now she was married to him. The man who had once made her want to die.

It seemed to Ellis that adults often felt a certain way one day and a completely different way the next. Kids felt the same every day. He did, anyway. His body felt sort of tight and sore, and if anyone spoke to him or looked at him the wrong way, his chest surged like it was on fire. He wished everyone would leave him alone to lose himself in his games. They were so straightforward. They were always the same, no matter what day it was.

After the police officers’ visit, he understood what it really felt like to be empty inside. He curled up on his bed and wrapped his arms around his body. It felt like he was hovering on the ceiling and watching himself. He didn’t cry or feel angry. He didn’t want to talk to his nan … he simply felt nothing at all. It was if something had sucked out all his insides.

His dad had died even before he was born, and now his mum was gone too. And nobody would tell him anything about it. Nobody seemed to know what had happened.

The worst thing was, when his mum had said goodbye to him a few hours ago, he’d barely answered her. He’d just wanted to get in the house and start his game.

He twisted and turned on the bed. It felt like pieces of him were breaking off, shrivelling and turning to dust. As though soon there might be nothing left of him at all.

‘It’s not that I’m keeping anything from you,’ his nan had said when the police officers left the house. She’d come into his bedroom and shut the door quietly behind her. ‘We don’t know anything yet, we don’t know exactly what happened. It looks like your mum might have been walking on the road and got knocked over.’

‘Has someone said they hit her? Were they looking at their phone?’

His nan gripped his hand and kissed it, but she didn’t meet his eyes and that scared him. And then he’d realised the obvious.

‘They think someone might’ve killed her and not stopped? A hit and run?’

‘Ellis, they don’t know that for sure yet.’ Her voice had sounded different to usual, like she was trying really hard to make him think everything would be OK but underneath she was as scared as he was. That made everything worse, because if the adults around you were scared, what hope did a kid have?

Whatever had happened, Ellis’s mum was dead now. She was never coming back. He wondered about the thing she’d made him swear not to tell anyone … did that matter any more? Or was it more important than ever that he kept quiet?

One morning, a few days after Tom had been discharged from prison, his mum had asked Ellis to go to the shop to get some milk and bacon. He’d grumbled, but when she’d said he could connect his Nintendo Switch to the TV for an hour when he got back, he’d decided it was probably worth the sacrifice.

His mum had seemed desperate for the items, even though they still had a bit of milk left and didn’t need the bacon until lunchtime. She’d almost pushed him out of the house. The local Co-op was about a twenty-minute walk from home and much further than that if you took the long way round through the skate park where there were sometimes older kids doing really cool manoeuvres on the graffitied concrete slopes.

Ellis had reached the main road, about seven minutes from home, when he realised he hadn’t picked up