Niamh

When Dylan and Hollie fell in love, my father always knew he’d have to stop them. But he let it go on, waited, until their hearts grew closer, their love deeper, until they couldn’t live without each other. Then he went to Dylan’s room and told him. My father likes to watch people suffer.

I heard my father shout, Dylan’s cries of pain. Later, when I found out what he’d done, I knew he might as well have given Dylan a loaded gun and told him to point it at his head.

Dylan was supposed to be the brilliant academic who’d have the same high-flying medical career as his father. Anything else—being the brilliant artist and musician he was—that was a failure in my father’s eyes. But it was never about what Dylan wanted. My father only cared about my father.

The sun was shining the day he told Dylan the truth. It was the day he destroyed his son’s dreams. Dylan couldn’t be with Hollie. Then my father told him he wasn’t good enough to be his son. Dylan’s hopes and dreams, and then his future, were dismantled, piece by piece, by layer upon layer of my father’s cruelty. Dylan didn’t kill himself; my father destroyed him.