"What about Catherine?" Mum asked. Her bedroom was like a Turkish bathhouse, covered in a fine layer of sickly, cloying steam from the large quantities of tea and soup she'd been slurping up for the past two days. An empty bone-china bowl of some sort of sloppy syrupy concoction of ground-up vegetables was sat on the bedside table, with a little plastic bottle of Neurofen and a cold, damp flannel. She was wearing her 'poorly clothes', the old nightgown with the teddy-bear print that smelt clinical; pungent with the memory of Cathy's baby-sick and Ultrasound gel.

Bitterly, Howard wrinkled his nose.

"Well, of course, she's with Heathcliff."

"I see. They seem to have become the best of friends, don't they?"

They were outside running around drawing pictures of fucking birds, and here was Mum, lying in her bed drooling clear fluid from the corner of her mouth, waxy-skinned, heaving her breath out through her mouth like she had a broken lawnmower for lungs, squeezing her blood around her meat with painful difficulty, those usually pretty grey eyes glaring up at the ceiling with a terrified, frantic intensity, burst red.

"Yeah, they do," he answered, patting her hand lightly as he sat on the edge of the bed, hovering over her with a glass of water for her to sip. Carefully he fed it to her and then placed her head back on the pillow, holding it in his hand.

"Are you lonely, darling?"

"No," he replied, "I'm angry."

"Why?"

"Because Cath should be here, Mum, and she isn't here."

The last clear memory of his Mother was her closing her eyes and smiling sweetly, her hands folded on her stomach, like she was lay ready for her coffin. He left her to sleep after she insisted Cathy was young and in her right to go out and play. She did not wake up. She had leukaemia, he found out days later. Howard had wondered why the hospital had suddenly let her go, especially when she looked worse than ever. Now he knew she came home to die with her son and her daughter and husband at her bedside. Only he was there. Dad was outside talking to the fucking horses, and Cathy, the giggling idiot, was out on the wide wide moor with a tramp.

When Dad entered her room late in the afternoon Cathy and Heathcliff were still out. Howard could still remember the sound of his knees smacking against the floorboards, right above his head, like the insistent hands of angels knocking in demand of his Mother's soul. Then he heard the crying. He knew what had happened, of course, so he didn't move. The longer he sat in the chair the longer he'd have dumb ignorance of the situation, which was the state he preferred in a stressful time – either that or pure rage.

When Cathy and Heathcliff got home they were sodden in mud and it dripped down Cathy's face, a tear of the blackest joy. Howard snarled. Heathcliff rubbed the dirt off his trainers, ground it into the fibre of the welcome mat, and Howard couldn't help but grimace at the irony – after all, the welcome mat was well and truly slathered in dirt. Dad had taken a tramp into the house and now no-one, especially not the people in the village, gave them even a nod of human-species-acknowledgement.

"Howie!" his sister greeted him with her greasy, war-painted face. "Are you alright?"

"Of course I'm not," he answered her, enjoying the sense of secret power.

Her face fell and the tear of dark happiness slithered into her mouth. "What?"

"If you were here, where you're supposed to be, you'd probably know," he seethed. Cathy blinked at him. Heathcliff had the audacity to frown along, like he was a big part of something instead of a big fat bird, a big fat cuckoo crowding their nest, uninvited.

"You're being mean again because I've been out playing," she snapped. "Well, shut up. I don't care what you think anymore Howie, you're turning into a right sod."

"Are you really surprised?"

At that moment Heathcliff's strange, staring cat eyes carefully drifted their gaze to the ceiling.

"What, that you're a sod? Yes I am," Cathy bit at him. "Maybe if you at least tried to spend a bit of time with Heathcliff, instead of tipping olive oil in his pants draw and tripping him up on the stairs you might grow out of it!"

"You're no-one to talk to me about growing up, you're a six-year-old little girl, Cathy, cryin' out loud!"

"Why don't you just say what the problem –"

Heathcliff leaned forward. He was stood behind her. His mouth was just beside her ear through the layers of straggly brown curls, falling stormily down the side of her face. He said something. His mouth moved softly and gently around the words and stirred against her hair, his fingers twinkling at his sides with some sort of perverse excitement. Howard glared at him.

"What –"

"Why is Dad crying?" Cathy demanded.

"Go and see," Howard said quietly. She started running and slopped mud across the floorboards. Heathcliff stared at her, watching her leave. Howard could take it no more, watching him stand there, on the welcome mat, so very, very unwelcome. He snorted and vaulted out of the chair, so fast and with such physical and emotional force the chair legs snapped against the wood. Heathcliff turned slowly in his direction, a frown pinching his forehead, regarding him numbly. Howard walked up to him, stuck his face into his face. "My mother," he whispered, "has just died."

He was so close now he could read the mechanisms of bone and muscle moving his throat as he swallowed. Heathcliff blinked. He smelt of the moor, rain, sweat, grass, dirt, nature's vinegars and nectars and salts.

"It's your fault," Howard told him, squinting against the smell and the dirt and the hate. "It's your fucking fault that my Mum is dead."

"I haven't killed her," he said sternly, and for a seven-year-old boy he was weirdly ferocious.

"You came here and she got so stressed and she got ill," Howard snarled.

"There's something wrong with her blood, you prick. I heard them talking. I haven't done anything. You don't get that through stress!"

"You're forgetting that I'm not Cathy," Howard hissed. Heathcliff pressed his lips together and leaned backward. "I'm not stupid, I'm not little, and I'm not easily-led. I'm not going to listen to any of your lies or be... taken in by any charms, or whatever sort of fucking witchcraft you've put on her. Everything was fine until Dad brought you home. Now you're here Cathy's gone mad and Mum's dead."

Heathcliff shook his head, "You should listen to yourself."

"You should watch yourself."

Howard jabbed his middle finger underneath Heathcliff's chin and felt the swell of his gullet. He hated the boy, and then he smiled, gleefully enjoying the boy's silence and fear and arrogance because God, one day that little cuckoo was gonna be gobbled up in his nest when motherbird wasn't watching.

"You filthy AIDS-riddled prozzy-baby little fucker," Howard spat, and then walked away, "I'm going to find Cathy now, because she'll need a cuddle, because she'll have just discovered her dead mother in bed, because –"

A cry from upstairs, Cathy's, high-pitched and girlish, resonated around the house.

"Heathcliff!"

Howard froze.

"Heathcliff, come here!"

"O.K.!" he shouted. As expected, Howard snatched out for him with zealous hate, but Heathcliff dodged his hand easily and went bounding up the stairs. As he stepped onto the landing, into the soft film of the dark, Howard made a painful sound. Moaning rose about the house, set into the dust of it. In here sounds – laughter, talk, anything – reverberated off the beams, the walls, the wood, your ribcage; and so the moaning doubled upon itself, hollowly echoed itself. It sounded like ghosts, tens of ghosts.

Or maybe it was just Cathy's Mother's spirit, messing with his head, her invisible mouth weeping and drooling and wailing deep into his ear, rattling through him, frightening enough inspire tears. Perhaps she remained alive in her hate for him, for her hate for him. Heathcliff bit his lip and focused. It was Cathy, definitely, she was distinct. She was real. The parents' bedroom was on the right. The door was open. He swallowed down the taste of apprehension, so intense it was thick petrol in his mouth, and walked inside.

Cathy was on her knees beside her Father, her two small hands clasping his back hard. Her knuckles stood out like little white bolts. She was staring at the back of his head, gently sort of thumping him into consciousness. He was lying on the floor, his weight spilling over himself, the bristly black hairs on the small of his back visible; he looked like a sedated pig. He was heaving out his breath. He was red, tears running over his face like grease on a basted pork joint. Heathcliff gazed at the scene, quiet, curious, and Cathy turned to him abruptly.

"H-Heathcliff," she stammered, her peculiarly blue eyes wild, pearly tears on her dirty cheeks. She was jittering, twitching, like a rabbit trapped in a burning thicket. Her lower lip was stuck out, bold red against her smudgy face, full of sticky perspiration. Her hands did not move from her Dad's back. She pointed to the bed after a couple of seconds, her eyes darting over his face, full of some sort of starvation.

Her Mother was there, dead, clearly. Her skin looked sunken, sapped, like wet tissue paper set over her bones. Her eyes were wide open. Her mouth was too. The skin was grey, her eyes were grey, like stone, glass. Dead.

"What happened?" Heathcliff whispered.

Cathy closed her eyes slowly and started shaking her head.

"It wasn't a cold," she mumbled. "She had a problem in her blood and it killed her."

Heathcliff nodded solemnly.

"It was in the afternoon," Cathy continued. She shook her Dad slightly and turned to him. "Dad, please. Come on. Please. Get up, Dad. Come on."

Heathcliff tried to think of words to say – kind words, comforting words. But that was Cathy, Cathy knew the words, Cathy had the language. What, in the world, did Cathy's Dad find comforting, see sense in, but a horse?

He thought of it as soon as he opened his mouth. "She's in heaven now. I'm sure she's in heaven."

Her Father snuffled meekly, and turned his head, still against the floor, to face him.

"Heaven, yes!" Cathy grinned at him through her tears, laughing and crying in Holy chorus, making her voice come out in a staccato rush. Her Father closed his eyes. He smiled in a gentle way, and then sat up. Cathy stood with him and held out her hand to Heathcliff. He took it, relishing the feel of her grime against him, her soft skin, her white pure radiance. He ran his fingers over her knuckles.

Her Father pulled her Mother's dead eyes closed with two probing fingers, kissed her shrivelled lips. He kissed his daughter and Heathcliff on the forehead, once each, and patted the back of their heads. "She can't stay here like this now, can she?" he said calmly. "She'd want her hair well brushed."

Within the hour the funeral directors were called. They met in the kitchen with Dad, and Howard remained in his room, silent, waiting. Cathy, well, she lay in the room, on her bed, next to Heathcliff, rubbing her bare feet against his, wincing and smiling at the pain when his jagged toenails cut her flesh.

A/N: Woo! Chapter 4 is doneski, and done so quickly as a special little gift to cherry-magpie-x :)

Massive thank-yous and cuddles to the lovely CocoRiot and cherry-magpie-x for their reviews, it means the world!

I hope everyone enjoyed. Please let me know what you think!