The House We Grew Up In by Lisa Jewell

loud, until really late.’
    ‘That boy does not get enough sleep.’
    ‘No, I know, and it’s affecting his schoolwork. You know, Rory can just flip through his revision in half an hour and he’s done, but Rhys needs to really concentrate and because he doesn’t really sleep, well, Dad thinks he’s going to fail all his GCSEs. And he’s just a bit, you know, weird.’
    ‘What, weirder than usual, you mean?’
    ‘Yeah, a little bit. He got hauled in front of the headteacher at school the other day for hanging around the girls’ changing room.’
    ‘No!’
    ‘Yes. It was horrible. We only found out about it because Dad knows the geography teacher and it was all round the school. And they couldn’t prove he’d done it so he wasn’t punished, but now apparently all the girls hate him and call him a creep and a pervert.’ She shuddered lightly. ‘It’s horrible,’ she said, almost silently.
    ‘Christ,’ said Meg. ‘What does Mum say?’
    ‘Oh, well, you know, she’s taken his side obviously, closed ranks completely, her precious baby, etc., etc. And as she says, there is no proof, just one girl’s word against his. But to be absolutely honest,’ she paused and lowered her voice, ‘it really wouldn’t surprise me if it was true. He’s the oddest boy I know.’
    ‘Come down and live with me,’ said Megan, suddenlyfearful for her soft-hearted younger sister who had barely spent a night away from home since the day she was born, and who tiptoed around the characters in her house as if they were the leading men and woman and she was just a lowly extra. ‘Come and live in London. Seriously. There’s space for another bed in my room, we could split the bills and everything. I could ask around for you for a job at my place – they’ve always got vacancies.’
    Beth smiled. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘right.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Can you imagine me telling Mum that?’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because –’ Her sister looked flustered for a second. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She smiled. ‘Maybe I could.’
    ‘Of course you could! You finish college in June. You’ll be a qualified secretary. London will be your oyster.’
    Beth’s face went from uncertain to quietly excited. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I mean, it would be fun, wouldn’t it?’
    Megan nodded. ‘Ten different types of fun.’
    ‘And Mum would still have the twins …’
    ‘Stop worrying about Mum!’
    ‘I know, I know. You’re right. I just can’t help it sometimes.’
    ‘You need this,’ said Meg. ‘You need to get away from her. From all of it. It’ll swallow you whole otherwise. I mean it. It really will. And you won’t even realise it’s happening until it’s too late.’
    Two days later Beth returned home from London. The Bird House sat quiet and dusty, filled with sunlight and distantsounds. She rested her weekend case at the foot of the stairs and called out once or twice. No one replied and she presumed herself alone. She felt coated with the grime of the big city. Although she’d had a shower in Megan’s immaculate little en-suite shower room just that morning, she couldn’t shake the feeling of it all over her skin. She made herself a mug of tea and took it up to her room. She stood for a while in the middle, imagining herself not in it any more, imagining herself instead in her sister’s room in Wood Green with its high ceilings and its views over a parade of shops, its shared kitchen and flatmates from foreign countries.
    It didn’t seem possible, although in every practical way of course, it was. She went to her window and took in the view across the rambling gardens, down to the old green hammock at the far end and the fields beyond. Memories fluttered about her mind, of days that had passed and died and were never to return. But when she turned her thoughts to the future there was nothing there, just space. She sighed and sat on the window ledge, pondering her lack of ambition, of forward propulsion. She’d