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“I heard that,” Alex calls out from the kitchen. “You don’t usually complain about my mouth, sweetheart.”
I wait until Lara has taken Max into their glitzy bathroom before I say anything to Alex, mainly because I want to shield them from his reaction.
“So, um, I walked in on Mum with another bloke last night.”
Alex wrinkles his nose, sending me a ‘why-the-hell-are-you-telling-me-this’ kind of look. “Again?”
I grimace, remembering all the other times we’ve found her ‘entertaining’ a man. Nothing too lurid, but when you’re fourteen and coming home from a night with your mates, the last thing you want to see is your mum lip-locked with some strange guy.
“Again,” I confirm. “Except this time I knew him.”
Alex comes closer, as if I’m about to share a juicy morsel of gossip. For a moment, I wish that I could say it was someone other than my dad, and then we could have a good laugh. His wide-eyed, interested look is going to last approximately two seconds as soon as I tell him the truth.
“It-was-Digger,” I blurt out, as if saying it quickly will somehow shield us both from the consequences. “I saw Mum kissing my dad.”
Alex is silent. Long enough to make me shiver, because Alex without words is a dangerous thing. It means he’s about to explode.
The fallout comes less than a minute later.
“What the hell? She kissed that douchebag? How could she? Doesn’t she remember what he did to us, what he did to you? For fuck’s sake, I’ve seen her sink bloody low, but this really takes the biscuit. I’m going to kill her.”
He starts to pace the room. Walking back and forth, he tugs at his hair with hi
s hands. Lara’s head pops around the bathroom door, and she catches my gaze, her eyes wide. I try to send her a look that conveys I have this all under control, but I think it just ends up looking as though I’m eating a lemon.
“How long’s it been going on?” He stops his pacing to look at me.
“I don’t know. It could have just been a one-off, I didn’t stay around to ask them about their relationship.”
“Good girl.” He squats in front of me, taking my shoulders in his hands. His grip is firm and reassuring. I’ve always felt safe in the arms of my big brother. “I don’t want him anywhere near you, not after everything that’s happened, and I can’t believe Mum would either.”
I say nothing because Mum’s actions say it all. Even if I don’t hate my dad in the way that Alex does, I’m still wary enough not to want him in my house. Again I start to wonder what her plans are, whether she’s thought this through. What if they decide to give it another go?
It’s going to tear our family apart.
Ten minutes later, Lara joins us, fresh-faced from Max’s bath and bedtime routine. Though she’s put Max in his cot, we can hear him softly singing to himself, and I’m half inclined to make a joke about him and Alex forming a band. Only this doesn’t seem like the right time for jokes.
“Here’s what we know,” Lara says, pouring a fresh glass of wine. “He and your mum were kissing in your house, but you don’t know if they’d just started, or if it was more than a friendly thing. It could be nothing.”
I take a huge gulp of wine before speaking. “Um, she had no top on.”
Lara coughs, spluttering Chardonnay everywhere. When she catches my eye, I feel my mouth twitch, and before I know it I’m collapsing in a heap of giggles. She joins in, laughing hard, and it takes a full minute before we can get ourselves under control. By the time I finish, my stomach is aching from the exertion.
“I can’t believe you saw that,” she says, trying to stifle her laughter. “Oh my God, it must have hurt your eyes.”
“It wasn’t the best thing I saw all weekend,” I admit, my mind immediately turning to Callum. “But at least she had the good grace to cover herself up quickly.”
“What about him?” Alex asks, markedly less amused than Lara and me. “Was he naked?”
“Ew!” I screw up my face. “I don’t know, I didn’t look. I just ran up the stairs as soon as I realised what was going on.”
“You should have come here instead.”
I shake my head. “As disgusting as it was, I don’t think I’m in any danger. It’s not as if he’s going to march into my bedroom and snap my wrist, is it? Even if he did I would fight back.”
Alex’s eyes narrow. “You’re not living there while she’s seeing that arsehole. We’re going to have a family meeting, and we’re going to sort this out. In the meantime, you need to pack up your stuff and stay here with us.”
It isn’t the first time Alex has asked me to move in with them, and I don’t expect it will be the last. His protectiveness is lovely, but it’s stifling, too—a reminder that none of my family realise how much I’ve grown up.
