The house was quiet when Ario and I got there.

“Is Paulo even home?” I asked Ario, who was scratching his brown hair as he walked into the kitchen.

“School finished a while back,” Ario checked his watch. “He’s probably in his room.”

He went and shouted Paulo’s name up the stairs, and after a pause Paulo’s voice came back.

“Shut up Ario, Carlos is sleeping,” he responded in Spanish.

“What are you doing?” Ario asked him in the same tongue.

“Why?” I could hear the frown in Paulo’s voice.

“I’m here,” I joined Ario by the foot of the stairs with a grin. “And we were wondering if you could make the dough for the arepas for us?”

Paulo looked like he’d been the middle of getting dressed and stood at the top of the stairs with damp dark hair and a topless frame. He was skinnier than even Eli. Paulo had been glaring at his brother, but he smiled when he saw me.

“I’ll be five minutes,” Paulo switched to English.

Ario rolled his eyes after Paulo had disappeared again, “If I had asked, he would have told me to piss off and do it myself.”

“He clearly likes me more than you,” I smirked at my cousin.

“Probably just because you’re a girl,” Ario replied. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

I dug my elbow into Ario’s stomach hard and walked past him into the kitchen. He started getting out the ingredients for the filling of the arepas and I had to admit that the Santiagos definitely did more cooking than the Simpsons. Their mothers must have taught them before they’d left Venezuela for England, with my father who was now dead.

“There aren’t many girls in the family,” Ario murmured as he started cutting pieces of fresh chicken from the fridge.

I grabbed another knife and started to help him at the counter.

“Carlos and Diego have another sister don’t they?” I said. “My half-sister.”

“Yeah,” Ario nodded. “She’s way older than us. Still lives in Venezuela with her husband and kids.”

“How old is she?”

Ario had to think about it, “Twenty nine, I think.”

“Carlos is twenty four,” I said. “She’s not that old.”

“Yeah, but she’s ten years older than us,” Ario said with a smile. “That’s old to me. And she also has a different mother to Carlos and Diego, so she’s their half-sister too.”

“How come she didn’t come to England with you guys when you left?” I asked quietly.

“She was sixteen and already betrothed,” Ario answered. “Couldn’t leave her husband-to-be. I don’t think Pedro would have taken her anyway. I’m sure he planned to form some sort of gang from the very beginning and probably didn’t want a girl involved.”

“But you were just kids,” I frowned.

“That meant nothing to him,” Ario mumbled and then he gave me a quick glance. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said with a shake of my head. “I was the one who brought him up.”

I should have seen that being a child had meant nothing to Pedro, my father. The things he had done to me, he shouldn’t have done to anyone, let alone a little girl. The Santiago boys probably had it tough with him too, during the part of their childhood they spent in London together.

“Do we even have cornmeal?” Paulo asked as he walked into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Ario answered. “In the cupboard.”

They were speaking in English because of me and I was grateful. My Spanish listening was better than my speaking, but that was only if they spoke slowly enough. Either way, it was generally easier for all of us, when I was around, to speak in English...which was why I’d barely learnt any Spanish so far.

Paulo started the dough with some water in a mixing bowl. He added a bit of salt and then started gradually adding the cornmeal, mixing it with his hand.

“I don’t know why you claim you can’t do this Ario,” Paulo said as he stirred and mixed the forming dough. “It’s so simple.”

“I never get the consistency right,” Ario replied, heating up a pan to cook the chicken that we’d been cutting.

“Don’t make it too dry or too wet,” Paulo smirked. “Simple.”

“Thanks for that,” Ario replied sarcastically.

As Ario cooked the chicken, I started cutting up the vegetables. I loved peppers. They were so colourful. I didn’t use too many though because I knew Ario didn’t like them much. He tolerated them because of my love for them.

“How has your day been?” Paulo asked me as he kept kneading in the bowl.

“It’s been cool,” I replied. “I was at university. Well, art school.”

“Same thing,” Paulo shrugged with a smile.

“How was school for you?” I questioned him.

He sighed and rolled his brown eyes, “Boring as usual.”

“Where are Miguel and Manuel, by the way?” I realised that they weren’t around.

“Football,” Paulo answered. “Straight after school.”

“Are they in the same club as you, Ario?” I asked.

“Yeah but they’re in a different age group to me,” Ario answered. “They’re seventeen so they’re in the under eighteens.”

“I know they are seventeen,” I smiled. “How could I forget the age of my dearest younger cousins?”

Ario and Paulo both grinned at me, knowing that the twins and I didn’t really converse that much. They were a lot more civil towards me now, but I just guessed they weren’t used to girls being around and weren’t sure how to act with me. So, like Diego, they kept their distance most of the time.

Paulo soon finished the dough and he started rolling small balls and then flattening them out into circles before lightly frying them on both sides. The oven was already warming up and the arepas would cook in there for about ten minutes until they were finished.

“This smell reminds me of Mama’s cooking,” Paulo smiled sadly.

“How do you even remember?” Ario muttered, a frown starting to form on his face.

“I just do,” Paulo shrugged, looking at the cooking food with a vacant expression.

Ario, Paulo, Miguel and Manuel’s mother and father had both died when they were young. Their uncle, Pedro, had taken them all to England a year or so before. I didn’t know the details of either of their parent’s deaths, just that they had died sometime after the boys had left the country. The boys had told me that the crime rate in Venezuela had been increasing at the time, especially within the capital city they were living in. Carlos had told me that young men in particular were killed every single day in Caracas and nearly all of those deaths were linked to criminal gangs. That was why the parents of Ario, Miguel, Manuel and Paulo had wanted Pedro to take their boys to a safer place along with his own sons Carlos and Diego.

Carlos and Diego’s mother was also dead. Again, I hadn’t asked how she’d passed, but it had happened before they’d even come to England. So like me, my half-brothers had lost their mother during their early childhood.

I’d been told that Pedro had had a respectable job and had made trips to the UK several times before getting him and the boys’ papers they needed for a more permanent stay. Pedro had, no doubt, also been involved in crime, but that side of him had been well hidden until his arrest in England when I was ten years old. After serving eight years for armed robbery and assault, he had been released and subsequently killed three days later.