‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ my grandmother asks as the taxi pulls away. I nod. She looks to my grandfather, their concern mirrored in each other’s faces. He shrugs, cracks open the window and lights up one of the pre-made roll-up cigarettes he keeps inside a tin in his pocket. The smell reminds me of my mother and I hate it as much as I hate her.

I disregard their obvious doubts and focus my attention on the sudden rain lashing against the car and the road. If I’d looked at the weather forecast in the newspaper this morning, I’d have brought an umbrella with me. I don’t want to smell like a wet dog on my wedding day.

I know what my grandparents are thinking, as neither has disguised their doubts that I’m making the right decision. It took weeks of persuasion before they agreed to sign the permission forms to allow me to marry at sixteen. But this is what I want, this is what I need, someone whom I don’t have to share, who will always be there for me, no matter who or what I am. Or even what might lie deep inside.

I’m starting to develop these urges, you see. Cravings to do things that I can never tell another living soul about because they wouldn’t understand. I don’t even understand them myself. The person I’m about to spend the rest of my life with knows some of what goes on in my head, but only

as much as I allow them to. The difference between me and my parents is that I can keep my urges under control, something they never managed. I’m counting on my spouse to help me become a better person. Once I’m married, they’ll keep me on the straight and narrow and the cravings will disappear.

I wish George were with us. It’s been five years since I saw him and I hoped he might have come back and found me by now. At eighteen, perhaps he’s now enrolled in the army and unable to take leave because he’s stationed somewhere else in the world? If I wasn’t getting married, I might even be tempted to join myself.

You know what happened to him, a voice inside me whispers. I choose to ignore it.

I know that, if he were here, George would be cracking a joke to ease the tension and reassuring our grandparents that I’m doing the right thing. I wish he had never left. But most of all, I wish I had not let him down so badly.

We’d spent so much time together, partly because we were all the other had and also because my parents insisted on it. They enrolled us in activity groups together, church clubs, sports teams and the like. As the older sibling, it was up to George to single out a kid who fitted my parents’ criteria and invite them back to our house to play. I’d join them in games of cricket or football in the garden and if my parents didn’t approve of George’s choice, Dad would offer the child a fizzy orange juice from his carbonated drinks maker. But if he or Mum took a shine to them, Dad would signal his intentions by offering our guest a cola.

Soon after, that child would fall asleep. Then he or Mum would carry them upstairs to the spare room and they’d stay with them behind closed doors as they napped. Later, they’d be driven home and Dad would explain to their parents they’d been poorly. And George and I were never allowed to return to that same club again. For a long time, we didn’t understand why so many of our new friends

became ill at our house. Eventually we accepted that it was just one of those things.

Because there was only a finite number of clubs locally that we could join, my parents used the caravan the house’s previous owners had left behind and we spent many half- term breaks touring the country and staying at holiday parks and campsites. Much like at home, George was encouraged to make friends in kids’ clubs or at the arcades. And after he brought one back to the caravan, we were sent out to play and the doors locked behind us. Before our new friends awoke, they’d be left unconscious somewhere like a roadside or car park and we were en route to our next location.

Our lives were cloaked in such secrecy that there was no one to tell us what our parents were doing was wrong. Yet somehow, we knew. But it was love, loyalty and fear of the unknown that prevented us from telling anyone. ‘What happens in our house stays in our house,’ Dad said. ‘This family will not survive if people start interfering. We’ll be broken up into pieces and you two will be separated and living in foster homes.’ We had no reason to disbelieve him.

They scared us equally, but increasingly, it became Mum we avoided where possible. Her mood swings were becoming more frequent and more erratic. One minute she could be making you dinner, and the next she was scraping it into the bin because of a look you gave that she perceived to be disrespectful. She was also much freer with her aggression than Dad was. The gold rings she wore on three fingers gave her slaps extra clout, and the cigarettes she chain-smoked left nasty raised red welts on my arms and neck. When she wasn’t enraged, she was lost in her own world, floating around the house wearing her melancholy like a housecoat.

I recall how the two years that separated George’s and my ages suddenly expanded when he turned thirteen. He began spending as much time as possible away from home

and away from me, creeping out at night as my parents slept and returning in the early hours stinking of beer and cigarettes. In hindsight, I can only assume he was developing a taste for normality and rebelling against our parents’ strict rules. But this desire for freedom was pulling him away from me. When I begged him to take me out with him, he laughed. Rejected, I turned to my parents to fill the George-sized void. I wanted them to give me a purpose and involve me like they had involved him.

The beginning of the end for our family came when Martin Hamilton appeared in our lives – a new lad George had quietly befriended and who became the catalyst for everything that followed.

My grandfather’s voice returns me to the present. ‘We’re almost here,’ he says, stubbing his cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘We’ll ask you one more time, are you sure you want to do this?’

‘Yes,’ I say without hesitation. And for a moment I think that he has a hand on my shoulder. But when I look to it, it’s bare. A comforting warmth spreads through my body when I realise that on the most important day of my life, my brother and best friend is with me after all.