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“Blimey! All right! I’ve done it then! I’ve turned it down.”
“Not down enough, Herald! It’s still ear-splitting. I think they can hear our telly all the way up on Mars!”
I try to ease the tension headache forming near my right eye. “Mum. Hey. Good morning.”
It’s like she’s only now realized I’m still on the phone. “Oh hi, dear. Did you manage to get some nice rest last night?”
“Oh, so-so.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. I’m only phoning because…well…” Then she laughs. “Drat. I’ve gone and forgotten already!”
“The program!” my dad calls out.
“That’s right! Dad swears he saw you on the telly this morning! It was on the news hour when they go over a bit of celebrity gossip. I don’t pay all that much attention to it, though I do love when they show the royals. Who can resist that little Princess Charlotte?”
“Mum.”
“Right, anyway. They said you were dating someone! Who did they say she was seen with, Herald?”
“Some bloke called Logan!” Dad shouts back.
“Yes! Logan! Lovely name. He’s a footballer from America. Very handsome. Anyway, that wasn’t you, was it? Dad swears, but I think he just didn’t have his glasses on and he saw a blonde girl who sort of looked like you.”
I look over to Kat for some sort of guidance, but she only shrugs as if to say I’m on my own.
“I well…I’m not sure what story you’re referring to…”
“Well, I think you’d know if you were dating someone as famous as him, honey!” My mum gets a real laugh out of this like I’m a total nutter.
“It’s, well…um, okay, yes. We have been seeing each other, but it’s new—”
Then she screams and drops the phone.
“Mum?”
There’s only static from her end of the line now.
“I think she’s gone and broken it.”
Kat sits up. “That’s probably for the best anyway, don’t you think?”
“Right. Suppose so. I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell them anyway.”
“Of course. You still haven’t made up your mind about what you’re going to do, have you? Oh well, no time to dwell on it now. My alarm was due to go off any minute anyway. We haven’t got long to get over to that job if you still want to come with. We can grab some coffee on the way if you want?”
$8 latte from the corner café? No can do.
“I’ll make us some coffee here.”
“Oh fine. Have it your way, though you never make it quite like they do at the trendy shops. After we’re done at the job, we’ll go for tea or something.” She whips her blankets off and stands up to stretch. “I flat-out refuse to work on a Sunday morning and not have at least something to look forward to after I’m done.”
She’s right. It’s not exactly the way I want to be spending my Sunday morning either, but that’s our lot in life. We’re not one of the lucky ones, the made-up ladies we pass on the street, having a lazy boozy brunch with loads of coffee and mimosas and croissants and eggs and sausage. I nearly pass out from all the delicious smells as we walk by, and then I look down at my slice of toast with a bit of cheap-o butter smeared on it, and my nose shrivels on impulse.
Kat laughs and locks her elbow with mine. “Oh come on, don’t go feeling sorry for yourself. The building’s just up ahead, and the flat isn’t too big. With the two of us working together, we should be able to finish it in under an hour.”
She’s wrong. The place is huge—at least eight bedrooms with loads of crap everywhere, and the family’s made a real mess of it. I’ve been assigned the kids’ rooms, and in one of them, I find three dirty nappies hidden in random spots: inside a cabinet, under the bed, tucked in with some socks. The last one’s so rotten I gag as I rush it toward the rubbish bin in the kitchen.
“No no no! I can’t stand people!” I shout out. “How in the world do they not notice that there’s a ripe old nappy stinking up the place?! It practically smells like a farmyard in here!”
“Yeah? Well I’ve just cleared off about three weeks of nose hairs from the bathroom sink, so quit your bellyaching!” Kat shouts back to me.
We go on working through the morning, doing our best to make this place semi-livable again, and by the end, my legs and arms are killing me. We load up our cleaning supplies and our sacks full of trash so we can clear out. As we head for the lift, my mobile buzzes in my pocket, but I can’t answer it. My hands are too full of the rubbish we’ve got to take down to the building’s dumpsters. We tried cramming it in the shoot up on the fourth floor, but the bags are too full.
