AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I called my mum. ‘Hey, love,’ she said when she answered her phone.
‘Hi, Ma. Are you alright?’
‘I’m good, thanks. I just had a busy shift and I’m ready for a cuppa and a biscuit.’
‘Sounds good.’
‘I’m a woman of small pleasures. Lucy, you need to call your dad and your brother. Call and make small talk. Your dad is worried you’re growing up and growing apart.’
I snorted. ‘Mum I’m twenty-five! Iamgrown up!’
‘You know what I mean. Call him and talk about baking or something.’
‘Noted. I wasn’t actually calling for a telling-off.’
‘You never do, but sometimes you need it. What’s up?’
‘If I were being blackmailed, what would you do?’ I asked.
There was a knock and Manners popped his head around the open door. I nodded to say he could come in and held up five fingers in the universal ‘I’ll be five minutes sign’. He shut the door and sat on the sofa opposite me.
Mum said, ‘Do you promise this is hypothetical? Because if you’re being blackmailed, we’ll go straight to the police. I don’t care if you’ve been in a porno or—’
‘Mum! I haveneverbeen in a porno!’ Manners’ head snapped towards me and I flushed bright red. ‘I swear we are talking hypothetical here, but I need a parent’s take on a situation. If someone made me do something – like take drugs or something – blackmailed me with video evidence, and then made me do worse stuff, as my mum what would you do to my blackmailer?’
‘They forced you to take drugs and do things against your will?’
‘Hypothetically.’
‘Then hypothetically, I’d hypothetically kill them,’ she said, her tone matter-of-fact.
‘You would?’ I was surprised and a little bit pleased. Mum is a nurse with a Hippocratic oath, yet for me she’d kill someone. Motherly love.
‘Yes. And your father would help me hide the body. No one on this green earth is going to hurt either of my babies.’ She paused. ‘Now if someone has nude photos of you, we can hire a private eye or something and steal them back.’
I groaned. ‘No naked photos, no pornos. This is hypothetical, I swear. Man, winning a bet is not worth this conversation.’
The last line sold it and Mum’s tone lightened. ‘Well, if you’re not being blackmailed then you’ll be coming to dinner this weekend, won’t you?’
‘And if I don’t?’
‘Then I’ll cry all day, certain in the knowledge that my little darling has flown the nest and left me behind without a second thought.’
I laughed; we both knew I was still surgically attached to her. ‘That’semotionalblackmail,’ I pointed out.
‘It seemed to fit with our conversation.’
‘I love you, Mum. If I can, I’ll be there.’
‘Okay, Lucy. Stay safe. Love you.’
‘Love you, Ma.’ I rang off and buried my head in my hands in mortification. ‘Can we go back in time to just before you walked in? And this time I’ll tell you to go away?’
Manners grinned. ‘No can-do, cupcake. That is now a cherished memory. I didn’t know you could blush so red.’
I groaned.
He sobered abruptly. ‘Why were you asking your mum about blackmail?’
