CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

For a little while, everything was great. Jane helped her mum and dad decorate the Christmas tree; she got to help her mum bake that Christmas cake. She even sat with her mum in front of the fireplace, drank hot cocoa, and watched Christmas specials on the telly. However, this idyllic lifestyle didn't last throughout the holidays.

There are certain warnings signs that precede the onset of an episode, and by now, Jane was pretty good at recognising them in her mother. Her mum would become very tired. She would withdraw into herself and stop talking as much. She would stop doing simple chores around the house. And eventually, she would lock herself away in her room to not be seen or heard from for days as the episode took its course.

Jane watched grudgingly as her mother slowly deteriorated, step by step, sinking slowly into the confines of her own mind. And Jane grew angrier and angrier with each passing day, until finally, she snapped.

They were sitting around the dinner table, but of course no one was talking. No one was talking because when her mum was slipping into one of her episodes, she didn't like conversation. She always claimed to have a headache or not feel well or have some other reason to throw everyone around her into silence. However, the scraping of forks and knives against dinner plates being the only sound didn't sit well with Jane, not this time.

Jane put her utensils down and wiped her mouth with her napkin before saying something.

"Don't do this," she said seemingly out of nowhere.

Her parents looked up at her, and Jane's eyes bore into her mother's.

"Don't ruin my Christmas," she said in a voice that was a mix between harsh and pleading. "Can't I just have one holiday that isn't ruined by unnecessary screaming or forced silence?" Her voice was getting progressively louder. "Why can't we be a normal family for one goddamn moment?"

"Jane Elizabeth Hensworth!" her father roared. "How dare you use that language?"

"Heaven forbid I use foul language!" Jane screamed sarcastically, standing from her seat. "Because that's so much worse than sitting around the dinner table and not saying anything at all!"

Jane's mum squeezed her eyes shut and put her hands to her temples.

"Can both of you stop screaming? I have—"

"A headache!" Jane finished. "Yes, we know. You always have a headache or don't feel well. You always have something wrong with you. Why don't you just go see a doctor?"

Jane's mother stared at her in shock.

"God forbid someone make you feel better, right? Because I'm beginning to think that you actually like being the way that you are," Jane said.

"Jane…go to your room!" her father managed to choke out in an angered voice; he had never been this mad before.

"You," Jane said, pointing to her father, "are a pushover and a hypocrite, and you," Jane pointed to her mum, "I don't really know what you are right now, but you're not being a mother."

Jane pushed away from the table, causing the things on it to rattle, and she ran up to her room, slamming the door behind her. And then ensued the screaming fest downstairs.

It didn't take long before her father came up to yell at her, but yelling at her was really the worst he could do. It wasn't like grounding her was really an option; she had nothing in Stockbridge to be grounded from. And if he tried to ground her from her friends at school, she'd probably just laugh in his face because it wasn't like she'd follow those rules.

Jane had yelled right back at her father, once again, calling him a pushover and a hypocrite. She honestly didn't care anymore. She was tired of everything. She was done with trying to pretend that everything, one day, would be okay and that they'd all be as happy as the Hogsmeade family that she so longed to be a part of.

From now on, Jane was just going to bide her time until she finally got out of that house. She couldn't wait to finally graduate and move away and start her own life. One day, she'd come back with her husband and son and show them what a normal family is supposed to look like, how a normal mother is supposed to act.

But until then, Jane was stuck in that house with a family that would never be perfect or even normal. Was she aware that her mother was sick? Yes. She was also aware that her mum refusing any and all help was not only extremely selfish, but potentially dangerous as well. Why her mother couldn't see that was beyond Jane.

The next day, Jane wasn't surprised in the least to find that her mother had confined herself to her room. And so for the remainder of the Christmas holidays, not really wanting to talk to her father, Jane did the same. So long as her mother locked herself away, Jane would too.