"Your father loves you, Enoch, and so do I because you're our son."

"Esther is...well she's not coming back, Enoch..."

"I'm really getting tired of this prodigal son act."

"Stop pretendin' all we need is a coat of paint for this 'ell ta look alright 'cause it ain't never gonna be!"

Enoch's eyes snapped open as suddenly as if he'd just closed them a second before. He might as well have, for all the sleep he'd been able to get the last few days. All he dreamt about now was replaying the last thing he'd said to his mother over and over, intermixed with horribly graphic imaginings, and his baby sister's face. He turned his head on the pillow and was met with red hair that might have made him smile at any other time. He was grateful she'd stayed, hadn't found the words to say it now but her being there offered the smallest bit of comfort he would let himself feel.

It hurt, physically hurt when he gently moved Olive's hand off his side where she had been tracing his tattoo before she fell asleep, and sat up. How many times had he wished to be out of his house? How many times had he longed to really have his own independence from his parents? This wasn't supposed to happen. He wasn't supposed to bury his mother. It shouldn't have been possible for this pathetic excuse for a family to fracture more.
Was the universe punishing him for every rebellious thing he'd done in his life? For every argument he'd had about hating school, and making friends? Because that's what it felt like. A great big anvil pressing on his chest. Enoch quietly moved to the side of the bed and swung his legs over the side. Then it came.

The anvil pressed harder, crushing his ribcage and his lungs with it to the point he could barely breathe anymore. His head began to swim and his vision to blur. His breaths came out in short pants. He knew this feeling but never, ever had it been this bad. A choked sound escaped from his lips and then, for the first time in over fourteen years, Enoch remembered what it was like to cry. Finally, the moisture welled up and spilled out and he couldn't have cared less about his pride because damn it to hell his mother was dead and he for all intents and purposes might as well only have one person left in the world who loved him and she was right behind his back.

Enoch felt cold, chillingly cold as his shoulders began to shake and finally the sobs escaped. There was movement in the bed but he paid no attention to it until warm arms were wrapping around his shoulders as he clenched his hair so tightly he could easily have ripped out a whole handful. Even less than a year ago he had been so afraid to let even Olive see him at his worst and now, now his free hand was gripping hers like his own life depended on it.

"You can let it out, Enoch..." She was whispering in his ear and, though he heard her, he paid little attention. It was happening anyway whether he wanted it to or not. His breaths came in painful little gasps and it hurt so much he might have been worried if he wasn't so distraught.

"Oh, Enoch..." Olive's hand ran through his hair and over his sweat drenched forehead and it was all he could do to choke out a single word.

"Why?"

Why indeed? Why should he suffer such misfortune? Why him? Why them? Why HIS sister and HIS mother? Why did it all have to catch up with him THIS hard? It felt easier right now, as Enoch leaned forward over his knees, to just fall forward and let himself drown than it would have been to fight back up for air.

"I know, I know..."

He pulled away so suddenly he all but threw Olive's hands off him in a moment as he staggered to his feet.

"Ya don't know! I 'ope ya never do know, because it 'urts so much! 'ow am I s'posed to take it?!" His throat was raw and his voice hoarse from sobs that left him trembling and tears that finally came. There was no use now in holding it together. There was no pushing this away like it never happened. He was plain and simply scared. He couldn't put into words how guilty he felt, how sorry he was and how much he hated himself for bringing things to a catastrophic end. His mother died thinking he hated her, maybe hating him, because he sure as hell would have hated anyone who said those things.

In a sudden burst of rage, he hurled the nearest thing he could, a heavy textbook, as hard as he could at the wall. All the grief, all the hatred, all the pain he hadn't been able to express was finally escaping and, while he still felt like being run over by a train would be less painful, there was the tiniest bit of relief, like a temporary balm to keep the ache at bay just for a second.

Enoch slumped against the door. It was three in the morning but he couldn't have cared less about waking his father up. Odds are he was awake and doing the same thing anyway. They'd hardly spoken more than a sentence to each other since it happened. But right now, Enoch didn't even want to let that thought enter his mind. He slid down the door onto the floor. The wood was cold against his bare back. Enoch ran a hand over his damp face and drew his knees up to his chest.

"Love..." Olive's soft voice broke through his haze of resignation and he was aware of her sinking down to the floor beside him. Her warmth reminded him he wasn't entirely alone in the world. Her lips, hot on the side of his head were an assurance he did have someone he could lean on. Her arm slid around his shoulders and without much resistance, he let himself slide lower and over until his head was on her shoulder.
She was crying too, he could hear her sniffles and feel the moisture on her cheeks.

If Olive was the sun, he was well and truly the moon, and the very dark side of it.

xxxXxxx

A week past and then there was just...nothing. Nothing but a kind of numbness that wasn't quite a balm but more of a sheer emptiness. Something was absent and now only a great gaping hole remained in its place. Living in this house felt like living in solitary confinement.

The funeral parlour, to the surprise of no Londoner, had not reopened. Olive had sent Enoch a picture a few days ago of the bouquets of flowers and cards left outside the windows. Should it have been touching? Should Enoch have felt glad for it? Well he didn't give a damn. It was getting increasingly difficult to give a damn about anything. No one had gone back to work, and nor had he gone back to university.

Olive had to leave. In fact, he'd insisted upon it. She couldn't take longer off her own course just to tend to him. Not when it was something she loved and she needed to have her own thing. So he'd told her he would be alright and she needed to go back to Cambridge. Olive still called him every day, and instead of him coming up to visit her for the moment, she would come to him. Enoch loved her for that.

Enoch O'Connor had never been a stranger to death since he was a tiny kid. His dad would talk about work, despite his mum's insistence not to talk about corpses and rigor mortis in front of the four year old. In primary school, when they talked about what their families jobs were, Enoch had even been told not to do so in so much detail when by the age of six he could quite adequately explain the process of embalming a body.

Then when he started going to work with his dad and seen his first dead body, it was fascinating, rather than weird, gross and disturbing for him. Since fifth or sixth year he'd been known as the undertaker's boy. Death was, if anything, his friend.
Twenty-one, and his favourite thing to do was study the human anatomy. Every tiny detail from the nerves to the epidermis.

Now even the thought of walking back in the funeral parlour made him feel sick.

He'd brought himself to visit the cemetery once so far. And had lingered for a grand total of thirty seconds before he couldn't bring himself to say the words that leapt to his throat whenever he thought about his mother. I'm sorry. He would scream it in his head and when he opened his mouth they wouldn't come out. All that escaped was a strangled sort of groan and he would give up and go home. "Home".

Three missed calls and one voicemail by the time he checked his phone, he'd left it on silent for the last three hours. He wouldn't call any of them back. But Enoch did dial voice mail.

"Hey, mate. It's just me." Hugh. "I wish you'd answer for once, I'm not gonna go on about it all, you know? I'd just rather hear that you're okay from you instead of Olive for once. Give us a call, you do have friends, mate...we're always here. See ya."

Hugh meant well. Of course he did, after Olive he was the closest thing Enoch had to a best friend, even if he liked to think he didn't really have friends at all. Nothing Hugh was doing from wrong. Enoch just...didn't want to be bothered. He didn't want to care. He wanted to get through it like he always had to. On his own.

The gate stuck, tangled in its own remaining hinge when Enoch tried to open it and it was like a switch had been flipped. Hang it all. Damn everything. In an explosion of anger, he kicked it. Hard. Instead of swinging open with a vengeance, the last hinge gave in and the metal gate clattered down flat.

"Stupid bloody fing..."

He let the door slam behind him and his keys clatter loudly on the kitchen table as walked past the slouched, crestfallen shape slumped over the table that was his father. Each day it was less and less of a surprise to see that sight, usually accompanied by a bottle of beer, or even a glass of whiskey Enoch didn't even know had been in the house. It was pitiful. As if he needed a reason to hate being around the man more.

There was a muffled groan but no sign of movement from the folded over figure until Enoch scoffed loudly and grabbed the glass right out from his father's fingers.

"The 'ell are ya doin'?" He growled between his teeth and rolled his eyes, walking towards the sink to pour it out.

"I don' fink you get ta make executive decisions 'round 'ere, Enoch."

If things had gotten rocky and strained in the father-son relationship since Esther had died, they had plummeted straight off a cliff now. Enoch left the glass on the bench and crossed his arms. "Well you're bloody well not. I ain't a kid, I know what that does ta ya..." He looked off to the side and added quieter, "Not that it's any better wivout it..."

"What'd ya say ta me?"

"I fink you 'eard." Enoch muttered and stepped sideways past his father towards the doorway into the hall.

"No."

The word made Enoch stop in his tracks and turn around stonily to face his father. He wasn't drunk, although he looked it. If Enoch was unkempt, Owen was much worse, unshaven and peaky and, recently, with breath stinking of alcohol. But he was perfectly sober now. His eyes were focused, practically daring Enoch to say it again.

"I said I'd rather live under a rock." He rolled his eyes.

"Ya really givin' still givin' me lip now?"

"You asked. And Mum'd 'ate you drinkin' like that."

"Don't you tell me what your-" Pain flickered across Owen's face, mirroring that in Enoch's when he'd said "mum" at all. "-ya mother would 'ate..."

"Well...she would."

"Pot callin' the kettle black, son."

"...what's that meant ta mean? I don't drink like that."

"Don't you give me what your mother wouldn't like, when you clearly didn' give a damn 'bout it when she was still 'ere!"

Enoch's throat closed up and he wasn't sure whether to shout or not. It didn't matter. His mouth opened and no noise came out. His father wasn't wrong. Not entirely. But really? It had barely been a week since the funeral. There had been no words of comfort, barely even a word at all to each other. No effort on his father's part to bother finding out how much Enoch regretted every day, how he blamed himself every minute for not being around, for not caring, for taking his own mother for granted.

"Shut up." He didn't even realise he'd said it aloud until his father's face contorted from one of grief and rage into shock.

"What d'ya just say ta me?"

"Well you tell me to!"

"I don't remember sayin' that ta you ever, Enoch!"

"No, ya wouldn't. All you'd remember is sayin' 'ow bloody awful I am! Ya 'aven't asked me once if I'm doin' okay?!  Ya don't bloody care!"

"My wife just died, Enoch, I'm a little preoccupied!"

"And my mother just died!"

Silence fell like the blade of a guillotine slicing between them. Like some violent mechanism of death severing the sinews and bone of what was left of the O'Connor household. It felt like an eternity had passed as they stared at each other like a young wolf challenging the old alpha and waiting for the real fight to happen.

"I'm done, Dad."

His voice was quieter than even he'd expected it to be. Tired, bitter, hard and oh so very serious though he was, he couldn't bring himself to argue another minute. Enoch shook his head and clenched his jaw, staring his father full in the face as he waited on knife's edge.

"What's that meant to mean?"

"It means I'm done. I'm leaving. I can't stay 'ere."

"Enoch Reuben O'Connor, if you walk out that door...you'll be back by the end'a the day...you know ya ain't got it in ya."

"Ya said that 'bout this." Enoch rolled up his shirt to expose the skull on his side, his face was hard, determined, and completely unblinking. "I told ya... ya really don't know me, Dad. I'll be gone in an hour."

He didn't believe he would do it. Enoch could see that, despite the brief falter in his father's eyes when he looked at the tattoo. He really didn't think Enoch could just turn around and leave. Well...surprise, surprise then.
He turned on his heel and stormed to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

xxxXxxx

An hour later, true to Enoch's word, he was looking around his bedroom with no sense of regret, and no sense of nostalgia. He'd meant every word he'd said, as the case containing most of his clothes and backpack with everything else from his sketchbook to his textbooks and laptop, would attest to. It was too late now. Too late to hope that he could ever have a proper family, too late to vainly hope that there could be any amends made. He needed out.

His father had moved to the lounge as Enoch walked down the hall and dropped his things by the front door with a loud, determined thud. What was he supposed to say? Sorry I couldn't be a good enough son for you? Sorry this house has been nothing but hell for a decade? Sorry that everything was always my fault? He still didn't know at all when he stood in the doorway glaring at his father with keys in hand and no desire to change his mind.

"Where will ya go then? Olive? In Cambridge?"

Enoch shrugged, "Don't know. I still go ta school 'ere. Maybe. 'aven't figured that part out yet."

"You're not leavin', Enoch. Ya know it."

He scoffed and rolled his eyes. "You 'ave no idea, do ya? I am my father's son, you know what you would do."

"If you walk out that door, Enoch O'Connor..." His father wouldn't even look him in the eye anymore, "Don't expect ya can walk back in like nofin' ever 'appened."

Enoch turned around and placed his hand on the front door.

"Good. I ain't comin' back."

It was hours later by the time Enoch's car pulled up at the curb. He felt nothing. Almost nothing at all as he walked up the steps to the front door and knocked. It was almost surreal, like he was in that hazy stage between dream and reality.

"I 'ave nowhere else ta go."