"Where the hell  have you been, young lady?" I sighed, bracing myself for the speech that was certain to come after this not-so-merry greeting. "Yet again, you leave the house without permission and come back when you please,  without even one text to tell me where you are. Tell me, Eve, are you that incapable of sending one little, measly text to the woman who raised you? Is it so very difficult to type 'I'm at the park, will be back in an hour'?! God, if you weren't so hopeless you could've done all your Maths questions and the dishes by now! But no, you just had to go off with her  again, didn't you?"

I was taken aback by the cutting tone that was woven into her words. Sure, I had expected some sort of reprimand or lecture on the problems with my generation when I got back, but Mum had never spoken to me with such viciousness before.

"Why do you care so much about me seeing Dylan?" I asked, annoyance coursing through me like poison.
"Because they are getting a bit too frequent for my liking, Eve. It's not like you'll wither if you don't spend every waking second of your life with her." The annoyance within me turned into anger, and I snapped, "You can't ban me from seeing her! She's my best friend, and she's been there for me a lot better than you  have lately!" I regretted saying those last words as soon as they escaped my lips, but it was too late.

Her eyes glinted with rage and I shrank back slightly , suddenly afraid of the apoplectic expression that had taken over her face. "You have no idea what you're talking about, you stupid girl." Her voice was dangerously quiet, her breathing ragged with anger. "Do you have any idea how hard it is for me at the moment?! Has your tiny brain even considered what it's like for me? Well, for your information I got pushed off the editor's committee only a few hours ago, and I come home to find that you've been out the entire morning without even bothering to bloody tell me where you've been, and you just walk in as if nothing is wrong!"

She was shrieking at me now, seeming to tower over me as I cowered away from her into a corner of the kitchen. "I-I'm sorry!" I stuttered, my terrified heart thumping wildly. "I didn't know! I'm sorry, okay? I'll tell you next time!" Instead of calming her, my words seemed to anger her even more. "You're sorry?" she spat, her face ominously close to mine. "You say you're sorry every time, and then you just go and do it again when my back is turned! I'm sick of it!" I stared at her in disbelief as the tears rolled down my cheeks. Then, without a word, I turned and ran up the stairs, sprinting away from the person that claimed to be my mother.

It was like she had been taken over by an identical imposter, I thought later on, sitting on my bed while my fingers absent-mindedly braided a few strands of leather that I had found on the floor. I get that she's upset because she's lost her job, but she  shouldn't have been  that angry . Suddenly, I thought of something. Germs are lurking in every corner of your room, Eve. Why didn't you clean it when Emma was here? You stupid girl, CLEAN IT! CLEAN IT NOW! Palms already slick with sweat, I sprung up off my bed and opened the top drawer of my desk, pulling out a duster, cloth, antibacterial cleaner, room spray and hand sanitizer. After pulling a clean sheet out of the airing cupboard in the hallway, I changed my sheets, polished and sterilized the surfaces until they shone, swept away specks of dust in the corners of the ceiling and sprayed my room sterile.

I flopped onto the floorboards (which I regretted almost instantly-I had skinned my knees a few days before while running and they screamed at the impact), a tiny smile on my face as I looked around my now germ-free room. But, like all the times before, it was short-lived and I sighed in defeat as the newly-spawned germs became evident in my eyes. The desktop's swimming with them...the sheets are poisonous...the rooms not even close to being clean, Eve. You should know that. As I stood up, I caught sight of the terrifyingly-familiar blade that sat menacingly on the windowsill. The scalpel from the days of my science obsession glinted in the stormy sunlight and I looked at my wrists, still covered with scratches and cuts that were almost like twisted battle scars. "No," I told myself firmly, hurriedly opening my laptop and logging into WebStoree before I could do any more damage.  "I won't do it again. I won't, I won't..." I muttered as the page loaded. I couldn't go back to that again. Otherwise I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop...

Half an hour later, I was two hundred and forty three words into Chapter Thirty Seven and all the ideas I'd had for the chapter I'd either forgotten or already used. This didn't usually happen. Writing came so naturally to me that the words seemed to flow out of my fingertips. But I couldn't get the images of Mum's outburst to leave my memory.

Do you have any idea what I'm going through...

You stupid girl...

Has your tiny brain even considered...

The second comment had hit home especially hard. I knew that my intellect wasn't amazing, but I wasn't failing Maths on purpose. Sighing, I turned my attention back to the story, trying to immerse myself in the plot this time as my fingers flew over the keyboard once more.

Mia squeezed his hand comfortingly as his breathing slowly went back to normal and his fingers stopped trembling.

No. I let out a quick scream of frustration into my pillow and jammed my finger on the 'delete' key until the screen was blank. Now what?  Fervently hoping that she had calmed down since the shouting that had occurred half an hour ago, I knocked on the door to her writing room and it swung open. "Yes,Eve?" Mum said tiredly, looking as if the last person on earth that she would want to see was me.

"Erm, could you help me write Chapter Thirty Seven for a bit? It doesn't have to be for long," I added hastily. "Only for fifteen minutes or so." She looked at me as if I had just asked to abseil down the side of the house, not help me come up with ideas for a quarter of an hour. 

"I've got things I need to do as well," she snapped, not looking at me. "In case you haven't noticed, I need to finish the first draft of my book by Thursday, somehow find a new job and make you and Dad a meal although I don't even know if we have anything in the freezer! Now, does it sound like I can help you?"
"No," I muttered, feeling stupid. " Sorry."

I quickly closed the door before she could glimpse the tears sparkling in my eyes. Although she was still physically here, I felt as if , inch by inch, she was slipping through my fingers and that one day, I would lose her forever.