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She looks up to see Mark has slid a blueberry pancake onto her plate, and smiles at him in thanks.
“Oh, I forgot the juice,” Susan says, setting down her fork.
“I’ll get it,” Kristen says immediately, nudging Freya to get her off her lap.
Susan waves a hand as she gets to her feet. “Don’t worry, love. I know where it is.”
She can hear Finn and Mark talking on her right. “I’m just saying,” Mark is insisting, “if you had a more efficient way to work out profit margins before you bought the house, then…”
Mel looks down at her phone again—it seems the safer option. Priya has sent a message, in response to the voice note Mel left her this morning, in between showering and coming downstairs.
Christmas activities? Like wreath-making? Maybe it’ll be fun! I doubt she’ll send you and Finn off on your own somewhere—it’ll be stuff you can all do together. Maybe it’ll be a good thing—keep you busy? Even if this whole thing is still ridiculous—and I PROMISE that’s the last time I’m going to point that out. If you need to get out of anything, message me and I’ll ring you with some kind of cross-continental emergency. And, in other news, I’m contemplating giving up cricket already. It’s even worse than when we tried to take up tennis in Year 8. Keep me posted! Xx
She feels the corners of her mouth pulling into a smile. God, she misses Priya.
She tunes back in to the room to hear Kristen saying to Freya, “That’ll be fun, won’t it?” Mel catches sight of Mark’s skeptical expression and wonders what, exactly, is going to be fun. Damn it—she should have been listening.
“But what will we do until then?” Freya asks, sticking her thumb into her mouth. Mel can’t help feeling the tiniest bit sorry for her—she remembers what it’s like, growing up as an only child. Adult company is just not the same when you’re a kid—and adults have a habit of forgetting how lonely it can sometimes be as an only child, no matter how brilliant those adults are.
“What about coloring?” Kristen asks. “Do you want to bring your coloring book in here? The one with all the sea creatures?”
“I love sea creatures,” Mel says, smiling at Freya. Freya looks up at Mel from under her eyelashes—and Mel decides to take that as an improvement. “Especially dolphins,” Mel continues. “Dolphins are my favorite.”
She gets a tiny smile at that, and Freya removes her thumb long enough to say, “Mine too. And whales. And turtles.”
“Turtles are great,” Mel agrees.
“So shall we say aim to leave in around an hour?” Susan asks.
Leave for what? Mel wonders. She glances around the table, looking for clues, and Finn catches her eye. She swears she sees a knowing glint in his eye.
“How about if I sit in the café with you to help judge instead, Mum?” Mark asks, folding up his copy of the Financial Times.
Kristen huffs out an impatient breath. “Mark, it’s not that big a deal. Just do this for your mother, will you?”
Mark half laughs, raises his hands. “Whoa. Okay, K.” He sounds a bit taken aback and Mel is too—she doesn’t think she’s ever seen Kristen snap at him in front of them.
“Thank you, Kristen,” Susan says. “I’m going to shower. I’ll see you all in an hour, pronto.”
There’s the scraping of chair legs as everyone gets to their feet. Mel isn’t quite out the way in time before Finn comes around her side of the table and swings an arm around her, plastering her to his side. In front of his family, she has no choice but to bear it. She can smell toothpaste, his aftershave, a faint charcoal scent, like he might have stoked the fire this morning.
“What do you reckon, sugarplum?” he asks, squeezing her shoulder and looking down at her. This has got to be the first time ever he has used a nickname like that, and she just about resists the urge to scowl. They are not the nickname sorts. His eyes find hers, and she recognizes the challenge in them. “A scavenger hunt will be fun, won’t it?”
A scavenger hunt? How the hell did she miss that? What, exactly, does that involve—finding things around the house? Presumably not, given they’ve been instructed to be ready to leave the house.
She smiles in an over-the-top way. “You bet, honeybee.”
Finn’s lip quirks, but she notices too late that her voice is perhaps a touch too sarcastic. She feels Hattie’s glance as the rest of the family leave the kitchen, reaches up to lay her hand over Finn’s to try to cover up the error. His gaze flickers there and for a moment they stand like that, quiet between them.
When his family are all out of the kitchen, she shoves him away. She couldn’t actually move him, given how much stronger he is, but he steps away immediately.
She pulls a hand through her hair. “A scavenger hunt?” she repeats.
A smile plays around his lips as he shakes his head. “I knew you weren’t listening.”
She narrows her eyes. “A mind reader now, are you? That’s new.”
He shakes his head. “Only with you, Mel.”
