It was an ordinary Saturday evening. The television was on, but nobody was watching it. We were all there: my dad, my step-mum and me. Except for my sister, but she didn’t seem to count anymore. And she was the reason we were fighting. Like I said, an ordinary Saturday evening.

I could comment on the weather, if it would make a difference. Was it raining? Probably, but what difference would that make? Would it make the story I am about to tell more believable? Would you anticipate a sad yet horrific tale? What if I told you it was set in Calderdale- right up in the Pennines? It always bloody rains. So what difference does it make?

I looked at him. He looked at me. I looked at her. She bore a hole through me. It was like one of those old Cowboy and Indian movies with John Wayne- who dared draw first?

“Well?” Well what? I shrugged; it’s none of my business anyway. “Who is he?”

Why the hell would I know? He’s not my boyfriend. I don’t want a part. I would rather be somewhere- anywhere- else right now. But, almost ritually, here we are, once more. Arguing about something I could care less about. My sister and I are the complete opposite. She slim, athletic, beautiful, confident and attractive; I ‘the other one’, overweight, frumpy and nerdy. You wouldn’t believe we were related- not that we admit it anyway. Annalisa was on her fifteenth boyfriend- despite being just 17. Fifteen men- for none were boys. All were ‘proper boyfriends’ by definition. But this one had crossed the line. He jumped in the sack and forgot to where his socks. Now I was to be an aunt, and our perfect, middle-class British world was slowly falling further and further apart.

The thing was, as we were standing there, I knew I couldn’t win. I knew who he was, but if I told, the Bitch would bite my head off for grassing my sister up. But if I lied, well, I’d get into trouble for lying and not grassing my sister up. I liked to think of it as the Bitch Paradox. Whatever I said wouldn’t change things. She’d still be another teenager up the duff. Another statistic- as if we weren’t already one!

“He’s called Darys,” I said, timidly. Despite my fifteen years, I was still scared of my parents- too shy to talk even to my own family. But a name would pacify her, surely.

I was wrong.

“I’m gonna fucking kill him.” (Miss I-never-swore-before-I-met-you-bitches). “I’m gonna slowly castrate him- make him feel the pain. The- BAM- dead as a dildo.” I think she meant dodo- but you never know in this century.

And she was off, raging like a bull and talking bullshit all the while. The door slammed. The car pulled away. And then there were two.

I looked at him. He looked at me. Now what?

And then she returned. Panic on her face and blood on her hands. This could never go anywhere good.

“Now look at me! Look what the bastard sister of yours did to me!” She was waving a gun around in her hand. There was no doubt in my mind that she would pull the trigger. Then Dad got up.

“Calm down, love. Calm down. What have you done, dear? Sapphire, go put the kettle on, make us all a nice cup of tea.”

That was just like my dad, a murderer walks through the door and he tells me to put the kettle on- like that will make everything better! I do as he asks none the less. Until… BANG…a scream….silence…BANG.

I ran from the kitchen to the living room faster than I knew I could. She held the gun in her hand- her blood spattered hand, though her face was gone. And Dad, oh Dad! I looked to him- the man who taught me all I knew; the man who was there when the world turned sour; the man who ran behind me the day the stabilisers were gone ‘I’m still here. I’m still here… I’m still here’- his voice more distant each time. And he just lay still on the floor.