Bree and Mack Gibbs sat silently in the living room of their tiny cottage, located in the only village in town, and watched as the fireworks went off on the television screen. It was the first New Year’s celebration without their mother, and her presence was sorely missed.

‘It’s not the same, is it?’ Bree said aloud, though not to anyone in particular.

Mack sat straight-backed on the couch and nodded slowly, to show his sister he agreed, or at least had heard.

Over in the next room, which was once a kitchen but had slowly morphed into a den of despair following Mrs Gibbs’ death, Mr Gibbs sat in near darkness as he flipped through photo album after photo album. He had looked over photos of him and his wife so many times he longer needed light to see them.

‘I can’t stand this, Mack,’ Bree whispered to her younger brother, ‘not for another year.’ She shuffled up from the floor so that she was sitting next to him and out of earshot of their father.

‘We have to do something. We have to leave.’

Mack continued to stare at the crimson red and speckled gold fireworks bursting in an airspace he had never breathed in, a world so far away it was as unattainable as his mother. This time he didn’t nod his head.

‘C’mon, Mack,’ Bree said, pulling at her brother’s arm so hard that he had to turn and slap her away.

Bree pulled and pushed and shoved, trying every trick in her book of older sister trickery, but nothing elicited anything but a stern grimace on the face of her younger brother, who, day by day, was becoming more and more like their father.

Staring into the chestnut eyes of her little brother, she could no longer recognise the same little boy who would go trick or treating with her each year or would help her play elaborate pranks on their parents. He was gone. Her little brother was gone. Her whole family was gone.

Now it was time for Bree to leave. She realised she couldn’t survive in this tiny cottage, located in the only village in town, away from the love and laughter that, until now, she hadn’t realised was the source of her mother.

Bree Gibbs jumped up from the couch and grabbed her woollen coat from the coat rack. She headed out the door, determined to never look back.