Free Here We Lie by Sophie McKenzie Page B

went to.
    They were all on their way here now. Sally would have warned them that there had been an accident but Rose had insisted she be the one to tell her brother and sister their parents were gone.
    How on earth was she going to do that?
    The minutes ticked away. The nurse was talking again, asking if she could fetch Rose anything. Rose shook her head. Panic filled her. She couldn’t bear this. She couldn’t face them:
Martin, so private, so tightly wound into his own life, yet so close to Mum, and Emily, still such a child, all smiles and sunshine. How could Rose obliterate their world?
    ‘Would you like to see them later?’ the nurse asked.
    Rose stared at her blankly. Surely the nurse hadn’t forgotten her siblings were already on their way here?
    ‘Your parents,’ the nurse explained.
    ‘Oh,’ Rose said. ‘I don’t know. No.’
    She didn’t know anything. Nothing made sense any more. She looked up. Martin and Emily were hurrying towards her through the long corridor, Sally just behind them. Martin was holding
Emily’s hand, almost pulling her along he was walking so fast. As they drew closer her eyes met his and Rose could see the shock of realization fill him. He stopped walking. Emily tugged at
his hand.
    ‘Come on.’
    Her face was still so open, so light. She had no idea, Rose realized. For Emily it was simply inconceivable that the world could keep spinning without Mum flicking through a magazine or stroking
Emily’s hair to help her sleep or Dad grunting over his coffee and telling them to be quiet while he watched TV.
    Martin began to cry, his arm over his face. Emily looked up at him, all concern. Rose hurried over. She was vaguely aware of the nurse beside her and of Sally hovering anxiously in the
background. But she kept her gaze fixed on her brother and sister. She had to look after them. Yes. The thought fell like a drop of rain: single and clear. That was what she had to do: take care of
Martin and Emily. Rose let the truth of it fill her, give her strength.
    This truth would see her through.
    Of course it wasn’t that simple. Plenty of people told Rose that she was too young to take on a moody teen boy and a girl on the brink of adolescence. But Rose never
wavered. It was what Emily and Martin wanted too. Martin – after that first cry – did not show his emotions again and only briefly, and very gruffly, said he didn’t need looking
after by anyone, that he and Rose would be fine taking care of Emily on their own. Emily was, in contrast, highly emotional, telling anyone who would listen that she wanted to stay in her home with
her brother and sister and that she refused to consider moving to anyone else’s house. She said so repeatedly and vociferously through floods of tears. She had turned to Rose immediately in a
way that broke Rose’s heart, yet helped mend it at the same time, asking her older sister to carry out all the little things Mum had used to do for her: from baking biscuits to reading to her
at night, a habit that neither Emily nor their mother had wanted to give up.
    Rose didn’t really want to read the silly friendship stories that Emily devoured. She had never been much of a reader herself. But she sensed that what would help Emily most was routine.
After almost a month of turmoil and endless conversations with family friends and distant relatives she’d never met before – neither Mum nor Dad had any living parents or siblings
– it was decided. The house was Rose’s – well, technically it had been left to all three of them, but Martin and Emily’s shares were held in trust by Rose as their guardian.
By the time of Martin’s birthday at the very end of November, the three of them were living alone together. It was harder than Rose had expected. She had plenty of money now at least –
from Dad’s life insurance – so she had dropped her waitressing job and decided to defer her university place too. She had time to shop and to clean, and