The brown paper isn't torn

"Two, three, five," I whisper. Each one getting louder. "Seven, eleven, thirteen," And louder. "Seventeen, nineteen, twenty three," I can feel my heart beating. "Twenty nine, thirty one, thirty seven," the numbers and beats getting louder and faster with each. "Fourty-one-fourty-three-fourty-seven-fifty-three-fifty-nine-sixty-one -" Someone shouts, it faintly registers somewhere, but I block it out. "Sixty-seven-seventy-one-seventy-three-seventy-nine-eighty-three-eighty-nine – ”

I flinch at the touch of a hand on my shoulder. Ninety seven.

"You -?" I almost collapse into her as the energy drained from my body. She catches me with a hug. "You -" the rest of the words escape me, as does my breath. One hundred and one. She sits me down on the sofa. My big sister.

"Yes, I left my bed. It's been a long time since I've heard you shouting, should I say screaming, prime numbers." She says as she wraps her arm around me. "What the hell has got into you?"

I lean my head on her shoulder, curling my legs up beside me. One hundred and three. Maybe if I keep counting it will be okay.

"Come on little sis, talk to me."

"Prime numbers that are two spaces apart are called twin primes."

"Seriously, you can tell me anything," she pleads.

"The largest prime number found so far has 24,862,048 digits."

"What is going on?" Her voice has lost some of the sweetness it held moments ago. My mouth refuses to open. One hundred and seven. My mind refuses to think about anything other than numbers. Maths makes sense. “You can’t just hide behind your maths degree. That’s not gonna protect you from the world.” But I want it to, I think. One hundred and nine.

She lets my head find a new resting place on the cushion, and I close my eyes tightly now she is not holding me tight. One hundred and thirteen. I can hear her footsteps, light and careful, head towards the doorway where she found me a minute ago. She stops. She must have seen it. One hundred and twenty seven.

She picks it up. Her footsteps sound again, each one marginally louder than the last as she returns to where I’m lying. One hundred and thirty one. There’s a gentle thud. I open my eyes a crack. She’s put it on the coffee table in front of me. I take a hasty breath. One hundred and thirty seven.

“A box?” She asks. I simply nod. “But the brown paper isn’t torn. You’ve not opened it. How did it possibly spark this reaction?”

I swallow hard. My mouth is parched and dry. I know exactly how. “The card,” I whisper in an almost inaudible croak. One hundred and thirty nine. She looks across the room: a letter and envelope had been dropped mindlessly, and floated to land half-hidden under the chest of drawers. She goes to retrieve them. I scrunch my eyes closed again. One hundred and forty nine.

I hear the rustle of velvet that tells me she is back, sitting opposite me again. There's another rustle, this time paper. No doubt she is reading it. “Friggin’ hell,” she breathes. I force my eyes open, though my mind resists - like a screaming toddler being taken up to bed. One hundred and fifty one. She catches my gaze, her eyes filled with sorrow and anger. Mine filled with dread. “It’s from him,” she breathes. She doesn’t need to say it. I know it is from him. That’s why the parcel, whatever it contains, is remaining unopen. There's a moment of silence that hangs awkwardly in the air like a half-deflated helium balloon.

"Him," I mouth, incapable of making an audible sound.

“That son of a motherless goat,” she sighs with exasperation.

And from within that moment of dread, with 24,862,048 fears buzzing inside my head, that phrase was the only thing that could have made me smile. Because somewhere deep in my mind, it sparked a memory. And I knew that my sister, with all her quirks, would keep me safe from the package. Would keep me safe from him.