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“Sex,” Claire and I groaned in unison. “It means sex!”
“Oh Jesus,” Mam groaned, covering her face with her hand. “Well, I hope you used protection, because the last thing our families need is a repeat of the Cherub and Brian fiasco!”
“We did, Sadhbh,” Claire croaked out. “And we’re both very sorry.” She elbowed my side before adding, “Aren’t we, Gerard?”
“Oh, yes.” I nodded solemnly. “We’re both very sorry and we’ll never do it again.”
“Ever,” Claire chimed in, joining me in nodding-dog mode. “We promise.”
“Do you think we were born yesterday?” Sinead arched a disbelieving brow. “You’ll be back at it the minute our backs are turned.”
“Exactly,” Mam agreed. “Do you know how to tell when a teenager’s lying?”
“When their lips are moving,” Sinead answered for her. “Which begs the question; what are we supposed to do with the pair of you now, hmm?”
“You clearly can’t be trusted to be left alone together.”
“Which means sleepovers are certainly out of the question.”
“And you can both forget ever stepping foot in that tree house again.”
“That’s right, Sadhbh. Over my dead body.”
“And mine, Sinead.”
“Ah Jesus,” I choked out, reaching for Claire’s hand. “They sound like they want us to get a divorce.”
“Well, that’s never going to happen,” Claire replied, giving my hand a reassuring squeeze. “Gerard and I are life partners. You can’t break us up.”
“Yeah,” I agreed with a defensive huff, gesturing to Claire. “What she said.”
“I’ll give you life partners,” Mam grumbled, clipping me over the back of the head. “You better hope your swimmers were contained, Gerard Gibson, because if you make us grandmothers before you both come of age, I’ll take you to the same vet as Brian and have you chemically castrated.”
_______________
Being demoted to Hugh’s room was a bust but I couldn’t argue with Sinead’s reasoning. In all honesty, I was lucky to be let through the front door again, never mind being given a place to sleep at night.
Tossing and turning like a deranged lunatic, I couldn’t close an eye.
Not because of nightmares tonight.
No, because I was wired.
I knew I could go home if I wanted to.
Mark was gone. My mother had told me as much tonight. An unforeseen emergency on his wife’s side of the family was the lie he fed Mam and Keith before he slithered off like the snake he was.
A part of me was furious with myself for letting him walk away for the second time, but an even bigger part of me was so overwhelmed with relief that it took the sting off.
Because at the end of the day, I had been carrying this cross for ten long years, and I had coped fabulously. I would continue to go on coping just fine once that monster was on the other side of the world from me.
The way I saw it, I was making the best of a bad situation. The worst had already happened to me, and I’d survived.
I had built myself up from the bottom, and I would rather die than let that bastard get the better of me again. I would never let him beat me again. He won the battle against the child version of me, but he would never win the war against the grown-man version of me.
The only way I could see it worsen, or him truly defeat me, was if people knew about it. That was the hill I didn’t think I could climb, and he knew that. My shame was his power hold over me and had been for a decade.
Regardless of his abrupt departure, I wasn’t ready to go back in my room. Knowing that he had been there again, touching my stuff, tainting the air… That made it hard to function.
