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Jerome always felt different from the others.  He was not the eldest, the heir to the throne.  It was as if he knew he wasn’t wanted.  It wasn’t that he wasn’t wanted, it was that John and Janet had wanted a girl and Jerome was another boy.  He completed the hat-trick.  Jerome was the third son.

When Jenny arrived, it was as if his tenuous position in the family fell even further.  Jerome was a mere baby himself when Jenny arrived and he was still a mere babe when Jenny left.  He could not remember her but he remembered how his Mother changed, how attention was diverted from him and then when grief took the place of love.

Unlike Jimmy, Jerome did not share in his father’s interests; he did not follow in his trade and he was too young to follow John into the war.  Jimmy followed in his father’s footsteps but for one the journey was only one way.

A loner by nature, the family assumed he was the clever one, his head forever in books.  Jerome was not particularly bright.  John and Janet were surprised when he did not do well in school.  If truth be known Jerome read for escape and no-one noticed the quiet little boy in the corner.  No-one noticed that he read particularly slowly.  It wasn’t just that he wasn’t noticed – he just didn’t want to be noticed.

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The letters at first came frequently – and then less so.  Janet assumed that was the way of things, that it was just Jerome’s nature, keeping to himself and keeping quiet.

Jerome was unseen.

Jerome had left home at sixteen.  He said he wanted to travel.  The family did not dispute this.  Jerome had always been solitary and did his own thing.  And then he wrote, spidery words.  They had all thought that Jerome was the clever one.  They just assumed.

Jerome was not clever.  The words that he devoured simply did not sink in.  He read because he did not want to be noticed.  Jerome, the third of the hat-trick did not want to exist.  He assumed that was what his family wanted.

Because they wanted a daughter.

The letters stopped coming.

They assumed Jerome had stopped caring.  He never did really take part in life.

Such is life.

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The body was mutilated and badly beaten.  It appeared to be a simple robbery.  Everything was taken including all identification documents so the police did not know who to contact.

In the end Jerome had no-one.

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Jerome