There’s a horrible, awkward pause while she gets her bearings and looks at him appraisingly like a Jurassic predator assessing its next meal.
‘I know you,’ she says.
It doesn’t sound like a good omen.
‘You do?’
She points at him as though her index finger gives her processing power.
‘You’re that guy,’ she says. ‘Mr. Statistic.’
She squints a little as she studies him and delicate laughter lines fan out from the corner of her eyes. But she’s not laughing now.
‘Mr. What?’
‘Mr. Statistic. You’ve got 85% chance of this and a 79% chance of that.’ She does quotation marks in the air for the last bit.
A distant memory after a sleepless, traumatic night scratches at the periphery of his consciousness. He breaks eye contact and looks around the room at the notices the crazy lady has fixed to every cupboard.
“No nuts, please. Georgia in Room D is allergic.”
Suddenly, he realises.
‘Oh My God. You’re crazy mattress topper lady.’
The kitchen door opens with a squeal, and Brianna appears with her new neighbour, Georgia. Brianna puts her arm around her new flatmate’s shoulder and Scott is immediately struck by the resemblance to the woman standing opposite him.
‘Georgia’s my new best friend for life,’ she announces. ‘We’ve got sooooo much in common.’
Georgia is beaming, reflecting his own daughter’s happiness, until she looks around the room, takes in the notices and pales.
‘Mum, what have you done?’
The only saving grace is that the crazy lady with the gentle green eyes looks every bit as dismayed as he feels.
Chapter 3
HEATHER
‘Whatthehellwasthat about?’ Georgia drags Heather back into her room and closes the door behind them. Her cheeks are aflame. ‘Do you want to wreck this for me from the very beginning, Mum?’
Every cell in Heather’s body activates. Everything buzzes. The fear of falling from the kitchen cabinet, the shock of finding a strange man’s hands on her bottom, the realisation that it washim, have left her in a total mess. And his daughter is suddenly Georgia’s new bff? It’s all too much.
She moves Georgia’s hair straighteners and voluminous make-up bag to the side and plonks herself onto the bed.
‘Honey. I’m sorry. But what are the options? You’re sharing a kitchen with seven complete strangers. How else are you going to let them know you’ve got a serious allergy?’
Georgia flicks her hair from her face and does a dramatic Kardashian-esque eye roll.
‘It is NOT a serious allergy, Mum.’
And there it is, the source of tension between them all these years. Georgia ignoring unpalatable truths, and Heather scurrying around at the fringes of her life trying, sometimes without effect, to keep her daughter safe.
‘How can you even say that, Gee?’ Will using her childhood nickname soften what’s about to come? ‘That time you kissed Bobby Price, you nearly died.’
‘I did not nearly die. I just needed my EpiPen.’
How do teenagers do that? Turn a one syllable word into a bullet? The worddienearly punctures Heather’s belly. Georgia stands over her with her hands on her size six hips, her eyes blazing.
