A suffocating silence had overtaken them.

No one had spoken in the half an hour that Neelofah had stepped into Raees' lounge. They sat, looking down at their laps or taken quick glances at the other, but not a word was spoken. Yaaseen sat perched on the coffee table, Raees sat on a chair across from Yaaseen and Neelofah sat wedged between the pillows on the one-seater. Layla and Afrah had made a quick retreat, allowing the siblings some privacy, but it was useless.

What was privacy when no one knew what to say.

Neelofah had missed so much.

Yaaseen was someone entirely different. When their dad died, he had been nothing more than a lean, lanky, dorky looking guy. Now he was spilling out of his shirt and smelled so strongly of chlorine, her nose itched. He looked happy though.

His eyes were bright and a small smile played on his face as he looked down at a text on his phone.

And Raees...

She shook her head looking at him.

He lost weight. He looked hard and haggard. And his eyes were so tired, as if he hadn't gotten a break in a really, really long time.

Why did she do that?

Why did she take their happiness away from them? She broke them up. Why was she so selfish?

Why was it all about her and what she wanted and what she was going through?

Why didn't she think about them?

Raees and Yaaseen looked up, surprised to hear the strangled sob that escaped her throat.

Neither of them moved. They watched her, but none of them stood to comfort her.

"I'm sorry." She whispered, covering her eyes as she bent over herself. "I am so sorry."

She kept saying the words over and over again yet still, neither of them moved.

"You don't get to make it better by just saying sorry, Neelofah." Raees' voice was soft and pained as he spoke. It was the first time he had said her name in five years. "Do you even know what you did?"

"I tried to kill myself." She looked up at her brother, closing her eyes at his unadulterated anger. He was still so, so angry with her.

"You took our family away from us." Yaaseen told her. "I told you not to do what you did but you still broke us apart. And we needed Mum so much over the last few years but we couldn't have her because of you."

"She-" Neelofah's words were cut off by the tears lodged in her throat.

"I begged you, Neelofah. I begged you to come for Raees' wedding. I told you he needed you and I needed you. After Dad died, we had no one anymore."

"But you got married..." She looked up at Raees, pleading for him to understand.

"Yeah but..." Raees bit into his knuckle; he didn't want her to see his pain. "Afrah couldn't make it better. She made me happy but that didn't make it better."

"But you were doing well. Both of you were okay... You weren't weak like me." She said, looking down at the pills she knew were hidden in her bag. They didn't need those... they were stronger than her.

"What makes you think we weren't weak?" Yaaseen asked, his voice breaking as he spoke.

"You don't need pills and you don't need to see someone every week just so you can wake up the next day and not want to spend the whole entire bed hiding from everyone else."

"You still don't get it." Raees muttered. "That doesn't make you weak, Neelofah. Going to a psychologist and taking pills doesn't make you weak. But what made you a coward was thinking that we would be okay with you taking your life the way our dad took his life." He could feel his hands shaking at the memory of it. "You thought we would get over finding you like that?!" He stood up, baring down at her. "You wanted us to see that you pissed on the floor with a fucking black tongue hanging out of your fucking mouth?! Is that what you fucking wanted, you little selfish brat?" He didn't even know what he was saying anymore. "After all I fucking did. After all we did hiding Dad's shit from you?!"

"I didn't-"

"Don't fucking say you didn't know, Neelofah!" she jumped back at his shout. "You knew he shat his pants because he didn't want to get out of bed. You saw Yaaseen and I sleeping outside his room for a month when we thought he would kill himself again. You saw us shove pills down his throat. You saw everything, but you chose to ignore it."

Yaaseen pulled Raees back, stepping in front of him so he wouldn't yell anymore. "I think you should go." He told her before he pushed Raees out of the room.

"Please, Yaaseen."

"Just go, Neelofah." He sighed, shaking his head.

Nothing would get through Raees now.

"I'm leaving tomorrow, Yaaseen." She said, her voice shaking as she stood up to leave.

"Okay."

And she walked away, reaching into her bag for the bottle she knew was hidden at the bottom.

Yusuf/Sumayyah

He was quiet. He had been lost in thought ever since they had come back from meeting Akeelah and it scared her.

She didn't want him to tell her that he regretted their life together. If Akeela's dad didn't do what he had, Yusuf would have been with Akeela instead of her. They would have had a life together... and she would have still been all alone.

If she hadn't met him and emailed him and spoke to him... he could have still had a chance with her.

"Yusuf?" she got into bed, closing his laptop gently. "Talk to me, please."

He set his laptop on his pedestal, before he turned to look at her.

"What do you keep thinking about?" she asked, preparing herself for the worst.

"Everything."

"Do you regret it? Us being together..." She looked down at their duvet, pulling at errant strands that were sticking out. "Now that you know the truth."

"What?" He looked genuinely shocked at her question. "You think I regret us?" He asked, lifting her chin gently so he could look at her. "How could you possibly think that I regret us?"

"Then why do you look so sad?"

"Yumna was here, in Joburg."

Sumayyah's eyes widened at his statement. "What?"

"Yeah." he shrugged his shoulders. "Why didn't she want to see me?"

"I don't know." She grasped his cheek in her palm, trying to soothe it all away.

"I know we don't get along but she didn't even want to see me. After all this time."

"I'm so sorry, Yusuf."

He smiled sadly down at her. "It is what it is."

"I guess so."

She rested her cheek against his shoulder, allowing him to wind his arm around her waist...

Just allowing him to feel her.

"I don't regret us." He told her, squeezing her gently.

"No?" she looked up at him again.

"Never. Akeela was..." He sucked his lip into his mouth, considering what Akeela really was to him. "When I loved her, I was a boy. I didn't know what love was but this," he held her closer to him, "This is love. I love you and our baby and I wouldn't give it up for anything."

"But why were you so upset when she told you the truth?"

"I hated the fact that I spent such a long time feeling hurt about it. I spent so many years feeling like shit when I could have been thinking about anything else except her."

"Yeah," she smiled, kissing him on his cheek. "You could have been thinking of me."

He kissed her back softly. "I'm always thinking about you."

"I'm always thinking about you too, Yusuf." Sumayyah shifted closer to him, savouring his warmth...

More than anything, this was her favourite thing in the whole entire world.

Raees

A body hanging limply.

Just hanging...

Hanging

A warm breeze causes it to sway.

Swaying slowly.

The chains holding it up creaking softly with every movement.

He couldn't see his face but Raees knew his tongue was black and his eyes were wide open in shock. He could smell the putrid stench of human waste and feel his cold skin...

Yet the body still swayed

Just swaying

And swaying

Swaying

He woke up screaming, his body stiff as he emptied his lungs of air.

Yet still, he carried on screaming.

Afrah's eyes opened, immediately pushing him back down onto their bed. "It's okay, Raees. It's okay. It was just a dream." She ran her hands over his face and his chest and his arms. "It's okay. You're okay." She said it softly in his ears till he heard her. "You're okay, Raees. You're okay."

She felt his arms around her back as he hugged her to him. "I'm sorry." His voice was thick in her ear as he apologised over and over again.

"It's okay." She smiled down at him, wiping tears from beneath his eyes. "It's okay."

"It's not okay." He sat up, pulling her with him so she lay against him. "I said the worst things to Neelofah."

"You were angry." She said, telling him the exact same thing he told her. "You needed to say them because without it, you would never go forward. It was all hiding inside of you and you needed to say them."

"But I never wanted to make her cry." He felt Neelofah's tears in his heart. He never, ever wanted her to feel like that.

"No, but lots of things happened that weren't meant to."

"I miss my family, Afrah." He whispered. He had never said the words out loud but he couldn't hide them from her anymore. "I miss my dad and my mum and my sisters."

She couldn't wipe his tears away.

There were too many to be wiped away.

"I miss what we could have been."

"I'm sorry, Raees." She sat up, hugging him tightly to her, trying to steal his pain away from her. "I'm so sorry."

"Please don't leave me." He said into her shoulder. "Please."

She cried into his neck... he tears soaking up his skin as she kissed his ear. "I'm never going to leave you." She kissed him once more. "Never."

And they sat, crying for what was and for everything that could have ever been but would never happen...

"I'll never leave you."

Yaaseen/Layla

"Yaaseen?" Layla woke up, surprised that he was still sitting up against the headboard, staring at the darkness before him. "Did you sleep at all?"

He shook his head, forgetting that she couldn't really see him.

He felt the covers rustle before he felt her head on his shoulder and her hand over his own. "Tell me about him. Please."

He joined their fingers together, squeezing her hands gently. "I'm scared to tell you."

"Why?" she was confused.

"I'm scared you won't understand."

She couldn't understand. Why would he-

Didn't he remember that it was wrong? He cut his wrists like a teenage girl. I think he tried to kill himself or something...

Oh God.

"Oh no," she whispered, utterly ashamed at the words that had escaped her lips all those years ago. "I am so sorry, Yaaseen. I am so, so sorry."

She had never truly understood how much it had hurt him knowing his father tried to kill himself. But it had cut him so deeply that nothing would ever fix it and instead of helping him, she only ever cut him deeper.

"I am so sorry, Yaaseen. I am so, so sorry. Please, I promise I won't ever..."

What could she say? She promised she wouldn't ever be an uncaring, tactless bitch again.

"Please tell me." She reached for the switch beside her, illuminating their room in the dim light of the lampshade. "Please-" she looked at him, feeling her heart break for him.

He was so sad. He didn't even know that he was crying... but silent tears rolled off his cheek as everything rolled around in his mind.

"Please tell me." She wiped her thumbs beneath his eyes, wiping the dampness away. "Please."

His voice was rough as he spoke, bitter with unshed tears that clogged his throat. "None of us knew he was so bad. We all just..." He shrugged, unable to vocalise it. "We just ignored him. I never told him that I wanted him to live."

His shoulders sagged forward, unable to carry the burden above it. "He left us, and we never, ever told him that we didn't want him to go."

She held him tightly, allowing his tears to fall onto her shirt, soaking it till she felt his salty tears on her skin.

"I miss my Dad, Layla."

She didn't say anything...

What could she say? She allowed him to cry because that was all he needed. He just needed someone to hold him as he truly mourned for his father, for the first time in years...

Neelofah

She looked down at the pills in her hand.

She could take them all and be dead. Leave all the shit behind for everyone else to clean up. It would be so easy to just swallow them one after the other.

It would be so, so easy.

She rubbed her hand through her hair, dropping them slowly into the sink below her.

She watched them all disappear

One

After

The

Other

She turned hearing the soft knock at the door.

No one would know.

She opened the door, her heart jumping in her chest as she saw him before her.

"Hey Nelly." Raees smiled down at her. "Do you want to talk?"

"Yeah."