Katie had barely collapsed onto the bed in her hotel room when there was a hammering at the door. As she opened the latch the door was forced open and almost knocked her over and Daniel burst into her room.

"What the hell?" She stepped up to him angry.

He squared up to her, unrepentant, "I can't believe you!"

She shrugged, "I'm tired Daniel, I've travelled the best part of eighteen hours to get here, and I don't need to argue with you. Not now and not like this!"

He scowled, "But that's just it Katie, it's all about you, it's always been ALL about you! You walk away and not a day passes when your father didn't grieve for you. You were like a living corpse. None of us could move on, get past the ghost of you. And now you come back and act like you've never been away, and you expect us all to accommodate you!"

"What do you want from me Daniel?" she'd expected animosity from Carmel, maybe even her father, but she'd not even considered the implications her actions had had on the little pest who'd become her brother for those few years.

"It's Dan! I haven't been Daniel since virtually the day you left, because that was the day I had to grow up and get on with life! You don't know me, you don't know your father anymore!" He paced across the room, "what do I want? Hmm, let me think?" He looked at her oozing sarcasm.

"You think that my life has been any easier? You had my Dad, your mother, familiarity in friends, family, your home.....I moved away because I didn't think that me and your mother could ever share a day out let alone a family and home. She hated me, and I couldn't bear the thought of seeing my father side with her on a continual basis, to reject me yet again. I didn't want to leave EVERYTHING I had, didn't want to have to start from scratch...but it was toxic living here, and everyone and everything was getting dragged into the hell of out battles." She sat on the bed and rubbed her aching neck. "I got married you know, with no father to give me away, no family, no guests!" She laughed ironically, "after seven years away I had a record beating birthday last year, a whopping 10 cards!" She turned to him again. "My life has not been easy. It's been anything but, but it saved you and my father getting stuck in the middle of the continuous arguments between me and your mother."

"So you did it for me? For the good of the family?" he laughed incredulously not wanting to believe a word of it.

She shook her head exasperated, "Why did you get in touch with me, let me know about Dad? I know it wasn't your mother; she was too shocked to see me. Why go to all that hassle if you resent me being here?"

"I didn't think you'd lower yourself to get back here. And I thought if you did then I could get some form of closure. The day you left, it was my fault, the argument was because of me..."

She suddenly saw the reason for the animosity, pain swept across his face, and for a moment he was that thirteen year old kid again. She rushed to his side, "no Dan! It wasn't." She put a hand on his arm. "You were irritating, and yes wrecking my make-up bag seemed like the biggest deal in the World, but if it hadn't been that, then it'd have been something else. You know that, don't you? The argument that precipitated me moving was literally the straw that broke the camel's back."

He turned to look at her, and she saw the raw emotions in his eyes, rejection, desperation and underlying sadness.

.....

She remembered the day like it was yesterday. Since finishing University she'd found it unbearable to live at home. Carmel rubbed her up the wrong way, and she knew she was no angel in this, she found it really hard to see another woman, another family in her mother's place. The memory of her mother was losing its vibrancy and becoming a flat monochrome image. And this was the topic that her and Carmel REALLY fought over.

That particular day, she'd returned from a day in town shopping with an old school friend. As she walked into her bedroom she saw beige circles all over her new cream duvet. She had gasped before turning to see the lipstick smears all over her mirror, and the greasy kohl smudges that adorned the china doll her mother had bought her from Naples when she was five, that had sat on her dressing table ever since.

"You little shit! I am going to kill you!" She screeched as she ran across the hallway and kicked open Daniel's bedroom door. He wasn't there, so she grabbed his favorite Star Wars X-wing, and ran downstairs.

He was sat in front of the TV, so she goaded him.

"Shall I snap this? Is that what you want when you ruin my things? Are you asking for me to break things? To take my revenge? I've told you to keep out of my room! Out of my things!"

He was thirteen, it was days before his fourteenth birthday. Old enough to have done the damage maliciously, but young enough not to read the antagonism between certain family members, and too naive to see how far this was going to push already strained relationships.

"It wasn't me!"

She bared her teeth, and squatted down next to him, "you little shit! It WAS you and it was on purpose! I KNOW that!"

"MUM!"

As soon as he called to the witch, Katie sighed, knowing that the mechanics of the argument had suddenly altered hugely.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Carmel was purple with annoyance as she burst into the room.

"Your son though it was funny to plaster my make up all over my bedroom and Felicity!"

Her step mother looked down her nose in a sneer, "a doll? All this is over a doll? You are paranoid!"

"It's not a doll! It's an invasion of privacy, damage to my property, that just happens to be a memory of my deceased mother! How dare you play down your sons' behavior as my neuroses?"

She shook her head as she answered, "there are more memories of the dead in this house than there are of the living! Enough is enough! I think you need to grow up and put this into perspective."

"How dare you? My mother lived in this house for fifteen years, we are talking about my mother! There should be memories of her here, lots and lots of them! The real perspective Carmel is that you resent me because it reminds you that my father was married to her before you, don't you?"

"Katie!" she froze as she heard her father's voice join the melee. "You weren't brought up and educated to screech like a street trader!"

She shook her head, "I've just had my room desecrated by Daniel. I confront him and I'm the bad person. Why is that?"

"She's clearly hysterical Bill, getting wound up over a doll, threatening poor Daniel. The girl's clearly mad!"

"Shut up Carmel! You need to look at your own child before you can dare to criticize me!"

"He's a child Katie!" her father finally interjected.

"Dad! He's nearly fourteen, he knew exactly what he was doing. He's not a five year old who doesn't know any better. I want Carmel to at least tell him he's wrong. But for some reason she seems to think he's an angel and I am the one who needs reprimanding."

"Just let it go Katie. None of us needs this continual raking over old ground."

Her mouth dropped as the words left her father's mouth. "So you're willing to let this woman remove every last ounce of my mother's influence? What happened to your backbone? And what happened to my father? There was a time when I was an equal in this house!" She felt an overwhelming finality sweep over her body. She'd lost, her home, her father.....this was no longer a viable situation. She turned to Carmel, "have no fear Carmel, I will leave before you have the opportunity to scrub or paint me away like everything else appertaining to my father's life before you, but once I'm gone you'll have nothing to hide behind, all the problems in your life will be due to you!" She turned back to her father. "I'm going Dad, and I'm not coming back. My mother will be turning in her grave seeing what has become of this home, this family. But hey, that's long been your choice!"

She turned to climb the stairs and heard her father start to say something, then Carmel whispered, "leave her Bill, let her calm down."

Shaking her head Katie climbed the remaining steps to her room. She packed up what she really needed and put it to one side, then she started on the rest of the room. She knew that whatever she left behind she'd never see again, this had been going on for ten years since Carmel had married her father, she couldn't go through it anymore. They'd argued over everything from clothes to meals, TV to family parties. It was blatantly obvious that they were locked in a battle for her father's attention, and whilst she knew she'd been no angel, she was hardly the demon that she was repeatedly portrayed as. She was fed up with fighting, fed up with the hatred. She'd needed distance, she needed to cut herself off completely.

She got picked up by her best friend from school an hour later. No one heard her leave, and no one came after her.

A few days later she sneaked home whilst she knew everyone would be at school or work and took the only things left that she wanted. She left a note with her house keys to her dad saying.

"Seems like this is goodbye Dad, I've got everything I want from my room. Feel free to give the rest to a charity shop. Have a good life, I do love you, Katie."

She'd flown to Mexico a few days later, the only place she'd felt she belonged in the last ten years, and had not set foot back in British soil since.

....

She looked at Dan, he seemed crushed. Squatting down next to him, she took his hands, forced him to look at her. "I never blamed you, and I'm sorry if our parents blamed you. There were a lot of reasons why I went, and the final straw was my father not supporting me. It'd gone on for years, and he'd been my last chance. You were an annoying little brother. But little brothers are meant to be annoying, that's their job!"

He smiled, and all of a sudden she saw the wicked little boy he'd been years before. "It was horrible, I missed you..."

"You just missed having someone to wind up!"

He laughed, "it was the fact that your father was so sad, my mother was so angry. You'd been the person who lightened up the house. I looked forward to you coming home for the weekend, it was a nicer house even with the fighting. I even loved it that my mother never had a go at me when you were around, she was too busy arguing with you!"

It was Katie's turn to laugh, "thanks! If only I'd known that I might have stayed!"

"Nah! You did the right thing."

She smiled at him, "you're crazy! You were the one I missed the most, of all people, I really did! Saying that though I have the same make up and CD's as I've had since I left.....no one was around to destroy them!"

He nodded knowingly, "lucky you!"

"Have you eaten?" when he shook his head she added, "let's go and get some food. I've been up for two days with the traveling, I need to get out or I'll fall asleep!"

He nodded, "there's a pub around the corner."

They sat in the welcoming pub and ate, Katie relishing the stodge of sausage and mash after years of Mexican food, and drank pints of cold lager. Catching up he told about his University course, he was studying engineering in Brighton, and was loving it. She in turn explained about her job, her life, her husband and Acapulco.

All too soon she felt as though she was sleeping on her feet. Dan walked her home then headed off home, between them they agreed to arrange some form of rota for visiting her father, and for the first time in years she felt content, maybe this would work out.

....

The next morning Dan sent her a text to assure her Carmel would not be beside her father's bed. She headed to the hospital early. Her father looked brighter, and his face lit up as soon as he saw his beloved daughter enter the room.

"I thought you'd leave..." his voice was still hoarse and it brought tears to her eyes.

"Dad I'm not going anywhere. I'm sorry I've been away for so long, but I had to. There was no way I could stay."

He nodded, "I know, I was weak, I should have stood up for you, and should have protected your mother's memory more. But Carmel is a good person, and I'm lucky to have her."

Katie laughed, "I'll take you word for that one!"

Groaning he reached for her hand, "Sit down, tell me all about yourself."

She obliged perching next to his bed and telling him all about her home, her job. As she mentioned Xavier, her father's eyes welled with tears.

"My only daughter gets married and I don't even know! I dreamed of one day giving you away."

She squeezed his hand, "we have to let go of the past Dad, it has happened. It won't do either of us any good to rake over the why's and wherefore's this far down the road."

He nodded, "everyday I missed you. I hired an investigator to find you, but I had no idea you'd head back to Mexico."

She nodded, "Dan said it was a touch of inspiration that made him think of looking there for me."

"Tell me about your husband, and your home." They talked for an hour, then her father looked tired. She kissed his head.

"I'll come back tomorrow."

"Promise?"

She nodded, "try keeping me away!"