The girls find bar work almost immediately, and spend the week working hard, playing hard, and other than some raucous phone calls with Trey, who’s spending a week travelling around Iceland with his family and Samir, they do very little to disturbher. Which is exactly what she needs. Heather is, after all, navigating a “Get Over That Asshole”period of her own.
And that’s how the equilibrium plays out until Wednesday afternoon, when Heather’s congratulating herself on another superb review on her website and Georgia comes home, alone, with heavy face.
‘No Brianna?’ Heather says conversationally.
Georgia’s shoulders rise.
‘Nah. She’s … busy.’
The wine Heather’s been drinking makes her more relaxed than normal, but her radar isn’t so skewed that she doesn’t pick up on her daughter’s evasiveness.
‘Georgia?’
Georgia drops her bag on the floor and scrunches her fists together in a tell tale sign that she’s being economical with the truth.
‘Look. It’s nothing, okay?’
Heather chooses her words carefully. ‘Okay. But from the way you’re behaving, itissomething.’
She frowns. ‘It’s not for me to tell.’
Heather and Georgia are still sitting on opposite sides of the lounge in a stalemate when Brianna returns an hour and a half later.
Her eyes flit from Heather to Georgia and then back again the minute the door closes behind her. Finally, her gaze rests on Georgia.
‘You told her.’
Georgia’s slumped body is instantly upright.
‘I did not!’
Brianna’s eyes move slowly towards Heather.
‘Sit down, love,’ Heather says, ‘I know you’re a grown-up and you’re entitled to your privacy, but given where your dad is rightnow and that you’re living here, I think it’s reasonable for me to ask, don’t you?’
Brianna thumps herself down on the sofa beside Heather in what Heather can only assume is the beginnings of a teenage tantrum, but Brianna holds it in check.
‘You won’t like it,’ she says.
Heather’s eyes move towards Georgia, who’s shaking her head.
Heather sighs. The pressure of parenting two teenagers is already beginning to take its toll. ‘Try me,’ she says.
‘Okay, but before I do, know this. I’ve thought it through. I’ve done my research and frankly, I don’t know why dad gets to say I’m all independent and everything and then—’
Heather holds her hand up, palm outwards. If Brianna’s in trouble, she needs to know right now, not after she’s taken hours skirting around the issue to get to the point.
‘Brianna. What do you need to tell me?’
Brianna sighs and drops her head into her hands before directing her voice in Heather’s direction.
‘I’m learning to drive,’ she says. ‘Dad doesn’t know. But I’ve been having lessons in St Andrews and a few down here. He says I can make my mind up about things in one breath and then turns around and restricts me big time in another.’
They fall into an uneasy truce. Heather cooks the girls a macaroni cheese, one of Brianna’s favourites, whilst thinking about how she should respond to her announcement. It’s easy to see Brianna’s point. Heather has often found the juxtaposition between Scott’s parenting of her and his reluctance to let her drive contradictory. Of course, the family history has a bearing on it, but a girl like Brianna, who was raised as a free spirit, simply can’t accept having her wings clipped and her autonomy restricted over this rite of passage. Heather puts the pasta on toboil and looks through her recent texts with Scott before he'd left. He made it clear he would be out of communication for two, maybe three weeks and that he trusted Brianna to manage her own affairs. Heather’s role, he emphasised, is simply to provide an oversight if things go wrong.
By the time she serves their food, Heather has decided. It’s Brianna’s life. If Scott feels so strongly about his daughter making her own decisions, he shouldn’t disappear off and leave her unsupervised, with no warning and no clear guidelines.
Heather tells Brianna her decision (omitting the judgmental bits about Scott) over their meal. Brianna’s resulting smile lights the room. She proceeds to chat unhindered about her driving challenges and successes, her readiness for her driving test, and the support she’s received from her two instructors. Georgia watches on, beaming at her friend.
