Page 95 - My Home on the Earth

Jake and his mum were at our house. I was in the lounge and he came in blabbing about Robin and the other boys. Then he cried, and carried on blabbing, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I stood to go upstairs and when I reached the door he threw Robin’s school bag at me. I dashed out and barricaded myself in my room.’
‘Surely your mum could hear what was happening?’ asked Olivia.
‘No. She was in the kitchen with Jake’s mum when two police officers arrived. I stayed upstairs and I watched the Coopers leave from my window.’
Cara was itching to know more. ‘Then what? Did the police speak to you? If they had, you could have told them about the rotten little devil.’
Elise shook her head. ‘In the beginning, I couldn’t believe my brother had died in the hospital. I was naïve and thought he’d come home and everything would go back to how it used to be. My mum wasn’t well and we didn’t talk about him. After the funeral, I stopped talking. Mum was told by the doctors it was a shock reaction and my voice would return in a few days. It didn’t. I went back to school and somehow managed to get by.
‘Everything was fine, until one day I had to fetch some table mats for an art lesson from a store cupboard in the hall. I went inside, put the light on and then I sensed someone at the door. I turned around. It was Jake Cooper and I was terrified. He wanted to know if I could talk. I was scared and felt sick because I thought he was going to
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