Last October.

The October Eric didn't come into school, and I'd found him alone in his flat with bloodshot eyes, in as many pieces as the broken glass around him.

The October he told me Lea left him.

The October he said he needed me, and our universes shifted.

Something's pounding in my ears, and I don't know if it's my head or my heart.

"I didn't know he hadn't told you." Nelly says, more diffident, more human than I've ever heard her, but I don't respond. It's my turn to ignore her, as I try and piece this together for myself. Why wouldn't he tell me?

He's never been too open about his family with me, and I've always understood. They're a big deal. But I knew the basics – he told me the basics. Why wouldn't he tell me this?

It feels as though the air's been knocked out of my lungs, and I don't know if breathlessness is supposed to hurt this badly.

I can't understand it, and the pounding intensifies with every question. That day I found him broken, why wouldn't he say what really happened? Those afternoons we bore our souls to each other, why wouldn't he tell me truth? Every morning he woke up, miles away from the people closest to him, who needed him and he needed too, why wouldn't he go home? Why would he stay in London, and force himself to carry his hurt alone?

The thought of his poor family is the only thing that reminds me of where I am. I shake my head, and it feels as though I'm coming out of a trance.

"Sorry, uh," I blink, "Nelly, I'm really sorry about your sister."

With her lips taut, and features still, her expression doesn't change. She only tilts her head in wordless acknowledgement.

"Things move on." Her bitterness intimates that she hasn't. Not that I could blame her. Christ. Losing your little sister to an overdose? I shudder when a picture of my bright-eyed Auggie flashes against all the noise in my head.

I want to be careful. With my emotions and hers.

"You said... you said she was my age?"

Nelly gives me a minute shrug, and she's good at those, but her eyes are more attentive now, and softer with something sympathetic, caring. She's worried about me.

She nods, pressing her lips together before she answers,

"Pip's age." She picks up her glass again, but her grip isn't as sure as before. She rushes the words like they're painful to say, before she takes a swift gulp,

"They were twins."

I feel my face go white as chalk. I bite down on my inside cheek, hard, trying to will my blood to back into my skin.

I thought I couldn't breathe before, but now I can't stop and it's going faster and faster, but I can't get the air to stay in.

"Jesus, are you alright?" The foot of her glass hits the tabletop with an unpleasant clink, and her heels click hurriedly against the floor. She stops when she's stood over me, and her small hand rubbing circles on my back is surprisingly maternal.

"Yeah – yeah, sorry," I say, getting the words out between intervals of deep breaths, "I had, I had recurring pneumonia when I was a kid. F-flares up sometimes."

"I didn't mean to upset you."

Upset me? When I open my eyes, I'm surprised by the sincerity of the wrinkle in her brows, a crease in her flawless visage.

I don't know what to say. She lost her sister and I'm the heaving mess. Once I recover my breath, I sit up straight, and she's slow to move her hand back to her side.

"I'm sorry... about that." I say into my lap, twiddling my fingers in embarrassment.

Nelly exhales through her nose, short and sharp,

"I assure you – I was in a much worse state when I heard."What? 

Of course she felt worse – she was her sister. If I didn't know any better, and hadn't spent the last few days being met with her cold shoulder, I'd say she's trying to make me feel better.

'...bringing home girls his dead sister's age'

As tipsy as they were, and as confused as I am, I know the implication of her words: I'm a crutch. A doll, a fucked-up imitation; a faraway manifestation of Eric's unwillingness to come home and face his sister's death.

"Why'd you call her Moonie?" I ask suddenly, and I've never wanted a hunch to be wrong so badly.

She's surprised by my question; I can see it in the stiffening of her posture. Still, she answers.

"We all did. We started calling her Moon because she was," she bites on her inside lip but forces an indifferent shrug, "she was our 'light in the darkness'."

She does her best to roll her eyes, but when her pupils go up, all I see is puffy red.

I gasp quietly, a gentle hand raising to my mouth. Oh my God. The music box. The fucking music box, and its shitty, tinkling rendition of Moon River. That's why he broke down over the stupid thing.

Nelly swallows a whisky-scented hiccup, and, for once, she looks like a person, rather than a figurine or a painting. I can't be sure, because she doesn't want me to be, but the choked noise sounds like it just might be holding back a snivel or sob – something real, raw and uncontrollable.

She sniffles, and turns around, hunched over something in her hands. When she turns around, she's shoving the bright screen of her phone in my face, but I see an unbearably familiar water trail on her pale cheek quickly wiped away.

"That's her," she snaps, harsh and hushed when she catches me studying her.

The slow shattering in my chest is final and finished when I look down at the picture. The girl's heartbreakingly beautiful. Her hair, tumbling down to reach her waist, is an unruly red. Just like mine. The roots, though, they make no effort to hide themselves, and they're the most brilliant gold, like Pip's. There's no other word for it. Her smile is golden, too. She's laughing, wide-mouthed with her teeth unabashedly on show, and a gap right in the centre, just like Nelly's. Her eyes are on the cameraman, her grin is for the world, and her thin arms... are wrapped around the wide back of my Eric.

He's sat looking busy, with books open on the desk before him, and his Mac on his lap as he types away. His smile, as tentative as it is while he works, shines just like hers.

She's the fairy girl, from the photo I saw online. His little sister.

I don't know when it escaped but a tear runs down my cheek and falls, and I feel the droplet on my folded hands.

I start to apologise, and raise my hand to wipe it away, it's not mine to cry, but Nelly speaks before I can.

"Don't."

Her voice is stern and severe, but she sniffles again, and her tearful gaze is brittle. Nothing falls, but she watches me, wordless, as though the tear was shed for us both.