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you couldn’t care less about the batch job and how it works.’
    Gib froze with rage. He just stood there scowling at me which made him look even more drippy than usual.
    ‘At least Aunt Beth likes me,’ Gib hissed.
    ‘She likes me too,’ I said, surprised.
    ‘No she doesn’t. No one likes you,’ Gib said.
    I stopped smiling at that. I stood up. ‘Stop talking rubbish,’ I said coldly.
    ‘It’s not rubbish. No one likes you. You’re not wanted. Even your own parents drowned to get away from you.’
    Every drop of blood in me froze. I stared at Gib.
    ‘That’s a n-nasty, mean thing to s-say …’
    ‘It’s true though.’ Gib’s eyes narrowed as he spoke. ‘At least Mum and Dad are my real mum and dad. They’ll never be yours, no matter what you do or how hard you try to suck up to them. And you’ll never be my sister – thank God. You don’t belong. I wish you’d go away. I wish you’d disappear …’
    Gib only stopped talking because he ran out of breath. I stared at him. I had to fight not to blink. My eyes were stinging and my throat was hurting. I tried swallowing hard, but I couldn’t stop tears from rolling down my cheeks.
    ‘Vicky … I …’
    ‘Y-you don’t have to say any more,’ I interrupted. ‘I get the picture.’
    Gib opened his mouth to speak again, but I didn’t want to hear another word. I ran out of the living room and up to my bedroom. Slamming the door behind me, I flung myself on the bed. I cried and cried until I had a pounding headache and a pain in my chest and I felt terrible. Gib had never said anything like that before. So that’s what he’d been thinking all this time.
    That thought made me cry even more. I stood up and stumbled over to my dressing-table. Opening the top drawer, I threw my socks aside. I’d been crying so much I was gulping now and I couldn’t stop.
    There it was, at the bottom of the drawer. The only photograph I had of my real parents. I took it out and looked at it. I walked slowly over to the bed and hugged it to me. Fresh tears rolled down my cheeks. If I didn’t stop crying I’d be sick, but I just couldn’t stop.
    I mean, I’d always felt that I never
quite
belonged – like a round wooden block in a larger square hole. But me feeling it and Gib saying it were two different things.
    I thought about how Mum and Dad and Gib and me would all walk down the street and I’d pretend they were my real family – that I really belonged to them. No one could tell for certain that I didn’t. OK, so Dad was black and Mum was white and Gib’s colour was lighter than mine, but so what? That didn’t prove anything. Mum and Dad
might
have been my real parents.
    I admit that sometimes I couldn’t help wondering if the way I felt about them would have been different if they were my real parents. When I bought them Christmas and birthday presents, I sometimes wondered if a real daughter would buy them the things that I bought. On my birthday, I would always wonder what my real mum and dad would have bought me. And then I’d tell myself not to be so silly. I didn’t think about it all the time, but it was always there at the back of my mind.
    I didn’t belong – not really.
    I didn’t belong anywhere.
    And Gib was right. I wasn’t wanted.
    Mum and Dad certainly wouldn’t want me now. Not when things were going so badly. I would be in the way. An extra burden. What if Dad went to prison? I could hardly bear the thought. How would Mum cope with a new baby and Gib and me, all by herself? I cried even more at that. I’d never, ever felt so miserable. It was the worst day of my entire life.
    I curled up in a ball and cried myself to sleep, wondering if Dad was all right and wishing myself a million, zillion miles away.
    ‘Victoria … Victoria, dear, wake up.’
    It was Mum. I sat up immediately. Mum didn’t usually call me Victoria. She stood by the bed, her shoulders slumped, her lips turned down. Her head kept drooping and she’d