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I expect Robert to burst out laughing, but he just lies there staring at me, his face serious. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I quietly hiss, pulling my dress down over my knees to cover as much of my legs as possible.
Sasha stirs but doesn’t wake up.
“What did it look like?” he asks, sitting up to face me now. His confidence makes me crazy. Only Robert could come across so justified in looking up a woman’s dress.
“You…you can’t just do things like that! It’s inappropriate.”
“I like your underwear. What kind of lace is it?” he asks, leaning closer and ignoring my outrage.
“Oh, my God, you’re a pervert, Robert.” I stand and storm into the house. He follows.
“Come on, Lana, it was a joke,” he calls after me.
I turn around to face him. We’re in the front hallway now. “Does it look like I’m laughing?”
“Clearly you didn’t get the joke,” he replies, deadpan, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, excuse me if I don’t understand the humour in violating someone like that.”
Now he laughs. “Oh, don’t be so melodramatic. I didn’t violate you. Violating requires an action. I was simply enjoying the view.”
“You lifted up my dress. That’s an action, Robert.”
He scratches at his jaw. “Well now, you have me there. Aren’t you flattered? I know some women who’d be over the moon to be violated by me.”
“You’re an amazing bloody prick. Why don’t you go ahead and find some of those women, because I’m certainly not one of them.” My heart beats hard and fast as I turn and hurry up the stairs. He doesn’t follow me this time.
I pause and sigh, calling back to him, “And go wake up Sasha. She’ll burn if she stays asleep out there much longer.”
I hear him laugh, and then he peeks his head back around the banister. “You do realise you just ruined your snappy put-down, don’t you?”
“Yeah, well, I sacrificed it for the sake of your sister’s health.”
“So noble, little red.”
“Oh, don’t you dare think about making that a new nickname,” I tell him indignantly.
He gestures with his hands and smirks. “It’s not a nickname, it’s a term of endearment.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “Let’s not pretend I’m in any way dear to you, Robert. Now just go wake up Sash.”
At this I continue up the stairs before going into my room and flinging myself down onto my bed. The fact of the matter is he had no right to do what he did. But, and I hate to admit this, the scary thing is that I can’t deny the tingles I’d felt as he lay at my feet, staring at me hotly and asking what kind of lace my underwear is. He’s the one scratch I have that won’t stop itching. The thing is, I’m getting the feeling that I’m an itch he very much wants to scratch.
Interlude I – Robert
August, 2002.
Gormanston, Co. Meath, Ireland.
I stare out the window of the taxi that collected us from Dublin airport forty minutes ago. Already I want to go back home. This is my first time in Ireland, and so far all I’ve seen are fields, motorways, and a handful of industrial estates. We passed through one town before arriving at the village where my mother grew up, and there’s piss-all to be seen: a big old boarding school and a scattering of houses, shitty bungalows mostly.
My sister Sasha sits beside me in the back seat. She’s almost as unenthusiastic about the move as I am. Mum jabbers on to the taxi driver about how she travelled to England when she was twenty, married my dad, and lived there for the better part of seventeen years, only to be cast aside for a younger model. He nods and acts like he’s interested in her story, but I can tell he couldn’t give a flying fuck about her troubles. It seems like she’ll tell every person who has ears to listen about how Dad was messing around behind her back, and with his secretary of all people. She likes to add in that part just to emphasise how much of a cliché the situation was.
In the back of my mind I know she’s not to blame for all this, but I don’t get why she had to ship us to a whole other country just because she and Dad are getting divorced. She could have simply moved to a new house in London and let us go to see him on the weekends. Now I’ve had to leave all my friends behind, and I’ll only get to see my dad during the summer holidays.
The driver takes a right turn off the road and onto a sandy path that brings us to a vast green field, beyond which there’s a decline that leads out to a long, golden beach. It looks appealing enough right now since the weather’s sunny, but I can imagine it will be miserable as sin during the cold, rainy winters.
Our new house is a small, white-washed bungalow, across from which is another small bungalow of a similar fashion. At least we’re going to have neighbours and not be completely isolated. Although, given the location, the neighbour will probably be some hermit old man with a dog who only ever leaves the house to sit on his front porch and stare suspiciously at the people who pass him by.
Once the car stops, I get out and reluctantly help Mum pull our bags from the boot. There’s a van coming in a day or two with our furniture and the rest of our things.
“Oh, my God, wicked!” Sasha exclaims. “Look at the beach. There’s a tonne of people on it, too.”
I glance down to see that there is a good crowd. All the same, her excitement feels like a betrayal. If we ever want to convince Mum to move back home, then we both need to be on the same page about it.
“It’s only like that during the summer months,” says Mum. “There’s never many around in the winter.”
