Free What You Left Behind by Samantha Hayes

mother’s voice: Consider deficiencies, trauma, blood-thinning medications … Check blood pressure, platelet count, vitamin K …
    Frank took the meat scraps out to the trash cans and Lana sighed, getting on with the peeling. But a moment later she heard sobbing coming from the main hall. She went to investigate and, on one ofthe nearer bunks, she found someone cocooned and writhing in a sleeping bag. Whoever was in there was caught in a jet of sunlight streaming in through the tall arched window opposite.
    “Are you OK?” she asked, tentatively touching their shoulder and catching a whiff of sickness and despair.
    Always get involved with the guests , her mother had told her. Find out their stories, see what makes them tick. It’s good for your CV. You’ll get interviewed about your work experience! Actually, she’d been wrong. Her CV, honed to perfection by her mother—eighteen years broken down into eleven straight A stars at GCSE, the same superlatives predicted four times over at A level, Grade 8 piano with distinction, Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award, and enough work experience for Lana to qualify as a doctor without even going to medical school—hadn’t prompted any of the four university interview panels to ask one single question about her work at New Hope.
    Lana tried again. “Are you OK? Do you need help?”
    The thing was, even though the interviews were over, even though she’d got an offer to study medicine at Imperial College London if she got the A grades in her exams, Lana still kept coming back to New Hope. Sometimes she wondered whether she was trying to assuage some of the guilt she still felt over Simon’s death. She wondered if her mother felt this way too.
    She patted the shoulder of the pupa-like wrapping. A mass of sweaty hair emerged.
    “No.”
    Lana recognized her voice. “Cup of tea?”
    More wriggling, and then a hand came out of the sleeping bag, followed by a face.
    “Abby, you don’t look well. Do you want some water?”
    Another shake. In fact, all of her was shaking.
    “I’ll get you some.”
    When Lana returned from the kitchen, Abby was sitting up inbed scanning the jobs section of the local paper. She took the drink and shoved something into her mouth from the palm of her hand. It got washed down.
    “Are you staying for lunch?” Lana thought she could do with a good meal.
    “Dean would have loved that job,” she said instead of replying.
    Lana could hear Frank in the kitchen, grumbling that he’d been left alone to prepare the meal.
    “What job?”
    “Vet’s assistant. He liked animals.”
    Lana turned her head sideways and read the job description. She fought the curl of pain in her stomach. “It’s the kind of job that vet sci students might apply for in the holidays.” For a second, she heard her mother’s once-keen voice sounding within her own.
    “What’s vet sci?” Abby said, turning her dark eyes on Lana. Her voice was thin and bitter, like the rest of her. Apart from her expanded pupils, she was barely there.
    “It’s short for veterinary science,” Lana said. She didn’t want to say that Dean would have had no chance of securing a job like that, that you needed qualifications, ambition. “Simon was going to be a vet.”
    She froze for a second as she realized what she’d just said, then turned and rushed back into the kitchen.
    “Who’s Simon?” Abby’s thin voice somehow filled the entire hall.
    But Lana was peeling potatoes again, fighting back the tears, incapable of an answer.

    G IL APPEARED AT the window, making her jump as she washed her hands at the sink. One side of the kitchen window still had chipboard nailed to it, waiting for the glazier to fix it; Gil was peering in through the unbroken side, his face looming like a large moon.
    Lana put her hand on her heart. “Jesus, you scared me. Where’s Dad? Did he bring you?”
    Gil held up two black plastic bags stuffed full of clothes. “He’s waiting in the car and he said I