Enoch O'Connor had never been a stranger to the concept of death. Since he was a kid he'd been exposed to corpses and funerals. It kind of went along with having a family who owned a funeral parlour. It had never really bothered him. He'd never been afraid of it and as he grew older he released how stupid it was for people to fear something so inevitable there was nothing you could do to stop it. If you were lucky, all you could do was delay it for a while.

He also never remembered being any more a "normal" child than he was a "normal" adult. Except for the part when he did remember a time he had a happier family. Sort of. It must have been different once. Now twenty he hadn't felt like he was good enough for his father in over a decade. After a while, he just stopped caring.

But there must have been a time when that was different. When, grumpy child though he was, he at least knew his parents loved him. He still knew that now, under it all, but it had never been the same after IT had happened. The IT that had changed any concept of unconditional, obligatory "love" that families were supposed to have. The IT that had could have given a young boy every means and reason to fear death and a man every reason to never want to look at the family business ever again.
The IT that Enoch had cut out of his life as if it had never happened at all, never even existed. At least, he'd meant to. But in his experience, things didn't ever seem to completely go away.

The day she had died.

Enoch was five when his sister was born perfectly healthy into a relatively happy household. He didn't remember her as a new baby very well, he had been too young to in great detail, but the very first impression of a little boy meeting a baby sister was plain and simply "She screams a lot". Of course he grew to love her, when it was clear this lump of pink flesh and wispy hair was staying around and that he had actually been one of those himself, as much as any siblings grow to love each other. Apparently, he had even been proud of being a big brother, but he didn't remember that much.

Now in his head, over a decade on from that day, he barely remembered much before it happened.

Even at seven, Enoch understood what his dad did for a job, though they had very much drawn the line at taking their seven year old son to see for himself, no matter how many times he'd asked. Enoch had even been told to sit back down in school once during a "tell us what your mummy and daddy's jobs are" when he started saying that his arranged parties for dead people and put them in the ground...

Morbid? Perhaps a little. He had no friends at school and it was right after that incident that the 'freak' labels started.
So a two year old girl with curly hair like his had to become his friend at home instead, even when she made him cross by following him around on tottering, tiny legs. He wouldn't remember what toys she liked to play with or the fact his parents absolutely doted on her, or even that once he had been mildly happy in his home. But he would forever remember, try as he might not, the day it all went wrong and would never come back.

She was two. Two years old and would never see her third birthday.

"Enoch? I need you to come to the office with me. Your dad is here."
Miss Finch had been a prissy teacher who liked to give of all manner of airs and graces but there had been a strange, quiet sympathy in her voice that Enoch only recognised as being the weight of knowing something awful had happened, looking back on it.

"Oh bloody 'ell, my boy..."

There had been no explanation for the bone crushing hug Enoch had been yanked into the moment he walked into the office, or the unnerving shaking of his father's arms until he'd been whisked out of the school yard and into the car. Frankly, he'd just been glad to get out of that classroom.

"Where are we going?"

There was no explanation then, but there didn't have to be for even a little boy to see that something was very, very wrong.

His mum inconsolable, his sister's bed empty and cold, and his dad brokenly trying to talk to him brought out the blunt, childlike words from Enoch that confirmed it all.

"Is she dead?"

She'd fallen. Hit her tiny, fragile head hard in an accident that cost a toddler her life. It was the last time Enoch ever remembered crying.

Things were never, ever the same after the funeral. There was talk of closing down the business altogether, and it would have been an understandable and tragic reason to do exactly that. Perhaps it was strange then that, months later, doors reopened.

Far from scarring him forever, though it did and Enoch pushed it further and further away from him with every year he grew, Enoch only became more and more interested in human biology and what happened to a body after death, far more than a child under ten probably ever should have.

The household was broken after that and all of them had held to the hope that maybe time did heal all wounds. But no one had allowed it too. Enoch's father grew colder and perhaps out of some fear of losing his son, became harder on him. Impossibly strict and raising the bar for Enoch every year he struggled and grumbled through school.

The hole a little girl had left was too great.

Far more terrible than the pain of remembering, far harsher a fate to themselves, it became as if she never existed.
Maybe it was a coping mechanism for a little boy, or maybe it was that the pictures disappeared one by one and no one ever talked about her anymore but he might as well have never had a sister. So he boxed that up young, and pretended, like he would do forever, that he had been an only child. That a death so tragic had never happened and he was plain and simply not a good enough son for his father on his own lack of merit.

It hurt too much and Enoch hadn't, and still didn't really, know how to deal with it so like the rest of his feeling and any small amount of sensitivity still left, he shut it up behind wall after wall on top of the humourless, rough, snide person he naturally was. Better to hide the fact that he had once loved his family more than he plainly had to now, than to acknowledge he had the capacity to at all.

He hadn't spoken, or even really thought, about her in almost fourteen years. No one who knew him, which to be blunt was really just Olive anyway who really knew him, knew there had even been a sibling at all. It was like tearing off a Band-Aid to find that the wound was still gaping and bleeding.

xxxXxxx

Forget telling Olive he loved her, or even asking her out at all. Forget opening up to ask her for help with his exams, and forget ever saying anything about his home life to her.

This was another level of implicit trust and, to Enoch, weakness in letting it show at all.

His hands, the knuckles of which had gripped the steering wheel so tight they'd gone white, were shaking slightly in front of him. Most of him did not want to tell Olive. But he'd gone too far and said too much already not to say a little bit. She could probably guess herself anyway.

"I 'ad a sister."

It came out barely more than a whisper, despite the tumult of anger, embarrassment and tension that had fuelled him to snap at her before. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the road, refusing even to let his gaze falter for a second. He could practically see her face in his mind anyway. He knew the pity that was going to appear there that he hated to think of.

"She died."

"Enoch...I'm so sorry..." There it was.

"Don't." It was harsher, more direct but his filter didn't work at the best of times let alone the few and far between times emotion rather than dry wit and logic drove his words. "I mean, you don' 'ave to. Barely knew 'er really. She was a baby, I was only...seven or somefin'."

"I had no idea..."

"Why should ya? No one does. Or no one I know now anyway."

It was the longest, ever, that Enoch had dropped his guard so. The longest, ever, he'd let that part of his life creep back in and it would be frighteningly easy to shut the door again.

"You don't have to tell me...I'm never going to make you,"
Enoch chanced a brief glance over to Olive. Her eyes were wide and wet and fixed on him with such tenderness he didn't know whether to be touched or feel distinctly pitied. So he looked away again and let her talk. "But why...why have you, all of you, shut it out so much?"

"Because it was bloody easier to pretend, poorly maybe, that she never existed. That's bloody why. I might not 'ave 'an 'appier 'ome like you but I'm not like you. So yeah, maybe it was an 'orrible fing ta do, maybe I am an 'orrible person, but you don't understand it, Olive."

"Enoch, stop the car."

Enoch did. Slowing to a crawl and pulling off the side of the road before practically throwing the gear stick into park and swearing under his breath as he turned his head to try and avoid looking at her. It didn't work. The first thing he saw was her reflection over his shoulder in the glass.
Olive was crying.

"Oh 'ell...it was almost fourteen years ago. I made my bloody peace you don't needa cr-"

"I know I don't understand."

There was the click of a seatbelt unfastening and Enoch finally turned his head. His eyes were hard and cold and held nothing but pent up anger in comparison to her sympathetic, teary gaze.
"I hope I never understand, Enoch. I'm just so, so, sorry you've had to hang that over your head, and I'm so sorry that I pushed on the wrong thing and you had to tell me."

"I moved on a long time ago. Believe me I knew way more 'bout death than any other kid in London."

"That doesn't mean you can never be sad. That doesn't mean you have to be ashamed because something reminded you..."

Olive's hand slipped across the car again as she swivelled around in her seat to lean sideways against it and fully face him. But this time she didn't just take his hand, instead she just held hers out in offer.

"Do I look ashamed? 'Cause I'm pretty sure that's just anger."

"Or that you have to be so hard all the time. When I saw how good you are with Claire..."

"Do ya fink that's why I'm a tough nut ta crack? Pretty sure I woulda turned out exactly the same anyway. That's just the bloody reason I'm pissed off ya kept talking about it."

He looked down at Olive's open hand between them. Slowly, he uncurled his fingers from the steering wheel and slowly took her right hand in his left. Immediately her fingers wrapped around his and she squeezed.

"What was her name?"

Enoch didn't respond for a few moments. Olive had just learned much more about him in five minutes than she had in five months at a time. She told him everything...and usually when he didn't ask for it...from her primary school friends to visits to her grandparents as a child. He might not retain most of what he deemed irrelevant information to the present, but the point was she told him. Enoch told Olive next to nothing about his life. In comparison to what he knew of Olive's life, his was a mess of strained family ties and a bad neighbourhood that he didn't need to, nor want to tell her about.

She was much too good for him and he wasn't going to dwell on the proof of that.

"Esther."