"What the hell?" I say stupidly. My mind is reeling, and I hardly notice her face as it dawns on her we don't know about whatever she's saying.
"Come into the office." She says kindly.
"Cassandra, Charley, I'm very sorry." She repeats. "Your dad committed suicide at lunch time today. He stepped off of a motorway over pass- he was killed instantly."
I'm frozen. Just like that. I can't hear anything but a blur of voices.
I vaguely hear Charley crying. I'm not crying. Why am I not crying? I'm just hollow. I can't feel anything.
As promised, they whisk us away in a police car. They don't take us to the hospital- they take us to the station.
"I need to ask you some questions about your father, okay?" An officer asks. I nod mutely, feeling Corinne's hands clamped around my arm. Charley has his arm around a sobbing Callum, and we're all in a tight huddle.
"Did his behaviour seem strange this morning at all?"
"Yeah. He kissed us all. He's never does that." I supply blankly.
"And did he give off any signs of depression ever?"
I stare at her.
"You know about our mum, right?" Charley says, coming to my rescue.
"Yes, we know about your mum's death. But what I'm asking is does he have any other reason for killing himself?"
"He smokes like a chimney." I whisper, only regretting the tense after I said it.
And then I cry.
Charley holds me as I sob, holds me all the way to the kids home we're taken to, holds me as we all sit together on a single bed. But it's him who falls asleep first, looking young as he lies next to Callum and Corinne.
I don't sleep much. Ever. Maybe three hours most per night, and the worst part is I'm not even tired the next morning. I just eat lots, I guess.
I don't really remember arriving here. Looks like a dump. Garbage bags litter the outside and a street light flickers by the window. I think we must have travelled a long way from school- I don't recognise anything around here. The roads are quiet, but it is 3am. A few teenagers laugh, from far away and I vaguely hear glass breaking.
I've heard horror stories about care homes at school- but this one doesn't seem too bad.
The room is fairly big, I guess. It has two single beds and an obviously hastily moved set of bunkbeds in the corner. But all my siblings are curled up on one bed.
We used to do that when we were younger, sleep in a pile. Sure, we had our own beds but most of the time, we all crept in with Charley or me.
I'm the mornings, mum would sit by us and we'd eat orange juice and biscuits in bed. Gosh- I'd forgotten about that. Early mornings, lying together, watching baby Corinne toddle around. Charley and I were maybe 10 the last time we did it- four years ago. My mum started to get sick a few weeks after that, and died a few months after that.
I remember her like that, the laughing, bright mum joking around with us and softening my dad's eyes rather than the last few times I saw her. I remember when we said goodbye, and she whispered the words through chapped lips and a hoarse throat. How she slipped her bracelet of her thin wrist and gave it to baby Corinne, how she undid a beautiful traditional Canadian good luck charm from her neck and pressed it into my hands, how she gave Callum a toy train she had carved months ago, how she gave Charley her battered silver watch. I've never seen him without it- actually, I only take off my necklace to sleep and even then I wrap it around my wrist. Corinne and Callum's gifts are hidden at home, as I don't trust them to keep them at school.
And I remember how my dad wept. How he never fully recovered. And we resented him for it.
I finger my necklace now. Sure, it's old and the string is tattered, but a small blue gem shines in the middle and to me, it's the prettiest thing on the world. The most precious thing.
The next morning, a social worker gives us a tour of the house.
"Corinne and Cassandra will sleep in here- I thought you'd be better together." She shows us a light coloured room with twin beds. Charley and Callum's one is almost identical, just slightly more stained and dirty.
"I hope you're feeling okay now. My name's Yvonne, but the way. After breakfast, I'll take you to your old flat to get your stuff." She places an arm around my shoulders that's meant to be comforting, but is more sweaty. She sighs at my bony, unhugging shoulder blades and then directs us all downstairs to the dining room.
For breakfast, we get bowls of sugary cereal from the cafeteria and sit down at a table.
We sit in silence until I say grimly, "At least we have milk."
There's a beat, and Charley and Callum burst out laughing. Corinne does too, although I don't think she quite knows what she's laughing at.
It's completely ridiculous, but the way our family always deals with sadness of any sort is grieve and then laugh. At least, my siblings and mum deal with it like that.
My dad, obviously, doesn't. This thought brings me back to real life and I realise what all this means. I'm never going to have parents ever again. I'll grow up in kids homes. Corinne, sweet little Corinne, and Callum, stoic, funny Callum will never know there parents properly.
We don't have any other family besides each other- our dad's parents died ages ago and our mum ran away from her home at twenty, soon after she got pregnant with Charley and me.
Afterwards, Yvonne drives us back home- it takes us at least half an hour.
Going back to our flat is weird. It seems different but exactly the same, in the most freaky sense.
I can't believe that everyone has carried on. Jo, our neighbour, is still knitting in the window, Donald, the weird landlord, is still strutting around the parking lot- I could almost imagine running up to our flag and hearing my dad's heavy, drink-fuelled snores.
A small, selfish part of me hates that they all carried on living life. I want it all to be different, worse because my life is utterly and truly wrecked.
Our bikes are parked outside our house. I didn't even remember leaving them at school. We leave them there, with Yvonne's promises of someone returning with either a big trunk or a bicycle rack.
I help Corinne pack her stuff into a suitcase, which someone from the care home gave us four of.
In the end, I just stuff my clothes, XBox, phone, toiletries, about three dozen books and a few notepads, sketch pads and photo albums into my bag. I glance hesitantly around the room. Yvonne said not to bother with bedding, they'd give us some.
Prying up a loose floorboard, I get out Corinne's bracelet and Callum's train. Gently, I get a dog eared photo of the six of us from the hiding place and press it into my favourite book- the first one in the Knife of Never Letting Go series. Which I then pack in my bag.
I glance around my home with Charley. It seems blank and I realise it was just 24 hours ago that I was hugging dad in the exact same spot.
Before Charley can see the tears welling in my eyes, I hurry into mum and dad's bedroom. There, I find a dark, untouched room. Clothes lie in tangles over the floor.
I haven't come in here since.... I don't know. Ages.
Firstly, I place his discarded laundry in the hamper. Not that anyone will do anything with it, but it feels like the right thing to do.
Looking through his closet, I realise that it pretty much only contains t-shirts and moth-eaten suits.
But crushed in a ball in the bottom of the closet is my mum's jumper.
The light blue one, woollen. She wore it often and suited it. I can't believe my dad kept it. Three years of him not even mentioning my mum had led me to believe he wanted to forget all about her. But he didn't.
I take it.
And then I leave my house for the last time.
