If i could tell you one thing about my brother it would be this: two days after his nineteenth birthday, he killed our parents and our twin sisters because he heard voices in his head. As defining events go, nothing else comes close for Elias, or for me.

I have often tried to imagine what went through his mind on that cool autumn evening, when our neighbours began closing their curtains to the coming night and the streetlights shone with misty yellow halos. What did the voices say? What possible words could have made him do the things he did?

I have tortured myself with what-ifs and maybes. What if I hadn’t stopped to buy hot chips on my way home from football practice? what if I hadn’t propped my bike outside Ailsa Piper’s house, hoping to glimpse her in her garden, or coming home from her netball practice? What if I had pedalled faster and arrived home sooner? Could I have stopped him, or would I be dead too?

I am the boy who survived, the one who hid in the garden shed, crouching among the tools, smelling the kerosene and paint fumes and grass clippings, while sirens echoed through the streets of Nottingham.

In my nightmares, I always wake as I step Into the kitchen, wearing muddy football socks. My mother is lying on the floor amid the frozen peas, which had spilled across the white tiles.

Chicken stock is bubbling on the stove and her famous paella had begun to stick in the heavy-based pan.

I miss my mum the most. I feel guilty about playing favourites, but nobody is around to criticise my choices, except for Elias, and he doesn’t get to choose. Ever…

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