Temere Mortis

Chapter Eight

Isla practically flew out of the tiny flat and headed to the only place she could think of at the time. Juliet Daniels to her credit didn't seem at all surprised when her daughter showed up on her doorstep. On the contrary, she scooped her sobbing daughter into her arms and over the threshold like she'd been expecting her all along. She cast a weighted look towards her husband who watched the exchange with a pained and hopeless expression. Wordlessly, he disappeared into the kitchen and returned a moment later with two cups of steaming hot tea in his hands. He placed one cup in front of each of his wife and daughter then turned slowly and left the room.

Isla raised her head from the crook under her mother's arm. She blinked back tears and reached for the tea, letting it warm her from the inside out. Immediately, she felt immeasurably better.

"Whenever I get upset about something, I have a cup of tea then I see if I still feel the same way," Juliet said knowingly. "It almost always calms me down."

"I always thought you drugged these," Isla admitted sheepishly, taking another sip. Her mother smiled serenely.

"Camomile," she replied. "It's known for its calming properties."

Isla found it easy to forget sometimes how much of a hippy her mum could be. The dreamcatcher hanging by the open living room window tinkled softly, glinting as it caught the rays of sunlight that cascaded into the room.

"You don't seem surprised to see me," Isla noted. She wondered if it was that obvious how close to breaking down she had been at the funeral.

"Danny mentioned that he'd seen you," Juliet admitted, sensing the question in her words. "He said you were probably in need of a good cry."

"He should probably spend more time getting more in touch with his own emotions, instead of creeping on mine," Isla grumbled, half-heartedly. Her mum fixed her with a stern, disapproving look.

"He's going through a lot Isla, more than you are."

There's nothing Isla hated more than being reminded she wasn't related to Alex. She was as close to a sister as Isla could ever had. She was the sister Isla would never have.

"I know," she whispered brokenly.

Once again, Juliet drew her daughter close and lay a soft kiss in her hair.

"I'll make another pot of tea," she announced, placing a box of biscuits in front of Isla, silently ordering her to eat something. "It will make you feel better."

It didn't take long for Isla to spill her guts to her mum, and shortly after to spill her guts literally.

After Alex died Isla hadn't cried as much as she ought to. Even whilst she clung onto her best friends' dead body in the lecture hall she hadn't cried a single tear. The people sat either side of her had been forced to rip her away from Alex's lifeless body and awkwardly comfort the shell-shocked girl. She hadn't been holding her and sobbing, it was more like rigor mortis had set in or she had forgotten how to move her hands and let go. She had merely stared blankly into Alex's empty eyes, naively hoping that they might spark and come back to life. Obviously, that hadn't happened.

Even in the days and weeks following, Isla hadn't let more than a single treacherous tear escape her eyes. At first, she had been ashamed of herself. After all, what kind of person didn't cry more than a few tears at her best friends' funeral. But then, after the dust settled she wondered if maybe she was just a bit broken.

Her and Alex had always been more of a double act, behaving more like conjoined twins than friends. She thought that maybe, when Alex had died so had her ability to cry. She considered that Alex had taken a part of Isla to her grave that she'd never get back. But as Isla cried hard enough to induce a rather large amount of throw up into her mothers sparkling clean toilet she had come to the realisation that she could cry after all. In fact, she was rather good at it and she'd been proving it for over an hour.