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‘Sophie—’
‘I hate Des. It’s all his fault. If he hadn’t written that shitty note, you’d never be thinking like this. He’s just trying to get you to do his dirty work, can’t you see? Getting you to snitch on Matty, to turn on him. It’s sick. But not half as sick as you falling for it.’
A moment’s stand-off and then she nodded, the tiniest dip of the head.
‘All right.’
‘All right?’
‘I won’t go to the police.’
I let out a breath, wiped my nose on my cuff.
‘Really?’
My mother never backed down on anything. Not with me.
She gave a little laugh, no mirth in it.
‘Think how mad he’d be if I’d called the cops on him.’
I smiled through my tears.
‘Pretty mad.’
This time when my mother went to kiss me, I let her.
‘You should get to bed. It’s late. You look exhausted.’
‘I’m not,’ I said. But I was.
‘I love you, Soph,’ she whispered.
There was such sadness in it. It turned, ‘I love you’ into ‘I’m sorry’.
I leaned into her, let her put her arms around me. Breathed in her warmth and the sweet smell of wine.
It was only later, lying in bed, that I realised what was still bothering me.
‘Think how mad he’d be’wasn’t the same as, ‘I know he didn’t do it’.
