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‘You already low-key ruin my life,’ he points out. ‘You’re definitely ruining my day, but I don’t let it bother me, I’m sure I’ll have another good night tonight.’
Kenny gives me a wink before getting into his car.
‘I’m serious,’ I shout. ‘You’ll be sorry, if you mess with me.’
Christ, Billie, less is more. With each word that I said, I swear, I sounded less intimidating by the second.
I know that Jess is a grown woman, and that this is technically none of my business, but not only is she my sister, Kenny is my neighbourhood nemesis, and if living next door to him is bad enough now, imagine what it will be like once he’s broken my sister’s heart. Our usual hurtful sparring over the garden fence will turn into me actually wanting to hurt him.
With Kenny speeding off back down the road, I turn my attention back to myself. I can’t worry about that clown now, not when there’s a whole circus inside my house. And with the star attraction still fast asleep in my bed, well, I guess it’s time I go wake him up.
20
It’s a nice idea in theory, making Declan clean up the mess he has made, but in reality, the thought of my bedroom – my carpet, my bed and probably my bathroom too – being covered in takeaway and God knows what else at this stage… it’s too much to bear.
As much as I don’t want to clean up after him (or any drunk person, for that matter), I’m hoping that in doing so I’ll be reinforcing the fact that this isn’t Declan’s bedroom. If we set aside the fact that Declan and I own this house jointly, this still isn’t Declan’s bedroom, because until last night, he had never even slept in it. When we first moved in, the master bedroom was in no fit state, so we slept on a mattress in the guest room. Well, Declan did, because he didn’t see the point in building up a bed for the sake of a few weeks. My first night in this house was agony. I ended up sleeping on the sofa (downstairs, alone, without blinds, which I hated) until I eventually built the bed up in the guest room myself. Declan was long gone before I even started work on the master bedroom. It’s all me, through and through, in every sense. Until last night, I was the only person to have slept in it – although I probably shouldn’t be broadcasting that tragic fact too loudly.
When I walked in here, not too long ago, the only signs of Declan were the remnants of his takeaway, his discarded sweaty-smelling clothes, and the stale smell of booze in the air. Declan himself was already in the shower, so I set about scrubbing the carpet, stripping the bed, and generally cleaning up to try to rid the room of the spirit (or person who had drunk too many spirits, at least) that has been possessing it. First I’m going to get rid of his mess, then I’m going to get rid of him.
As I turn on the electric diffuser, pumping sandalwood into the room in an attempt to get rid of the smell of stale booze and unfinished takeaway, Declan emerges from the bathroom with a towel around his waist. His dark hair, which is just past his shoulders now, is dripping water all over the carpet. I’d tell him to put a towel around it if I weren’t worried he would take the one from around his body to do so. From what I can see of his body, it’s changed quite drastically. He’s lost weight, not that he needed to, and not in a way that looks good. He’s skinny, his bony frame almost poking out from under his pale skin, in a way that just makes him look like he hasn’t been taking proper care of himself. Not in an unhealthy way or anything, he looks well enough, just sort of scruffy and uncared for.
‘Good morning, Billie,’ he says brightly.
I wonder if he’s been drinking a lot recently because if I got as drunk as he did last night, I would be on my arse today, not emerging cheerily from the shower.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I ask him, cutting to the chase.
‘I’m home,’ he replies – which is what he said last night but I was hoping that was just drunken garbage. Today he sounds like he means it.
‘This isn’t your home,’ I tell him. ‘You left, remember? You didn’t want this life.’
‘Well, I also don’t want to be homeless over Christmas,’ he says, pulling a face, a sort of amused grimace, as if to say ‘uh-oh’.
‘Not my problem,’ I point out. ‘You chose to leave.’
‘Well, now I’m choosing to come back,’ he points out with a smile. ‘Thanks for cleaning up my bedroom for me.’
‘Oh, fuck off,’ I can’t help but blurt.
‘Look, my cheeky, irresistible charm aside, I do remember considering last night that you might not want to share a bed with me, but all the other rooms seemed like they had people in them, and this one was empty, so I got in. I thought you might be in the room we used to sleep in. This one is great, though, I love what you’ve done with it.’
I don’t thank him.
‘My parents and Jess are staying here,’ I say. ‘So all the rooms are spoken for. There’s a sofa bed in the office. When Jess is awake, I’ll move her out of there, you can put your things and yourself in there, while you work out where you’re going to go, because you are not staying here.’
‘Well, that’s a start,’ he replies. ‘The office is where we christened the house, do you remember?’
‘I don’t remember at all,’ I reply, which is obviously a lie, but I’m not going to give him the satisfaction. ‘I thought it was on the stairs, and that’s how we broke the banister, and…’
Declan stares at me blankly.
‘Oh, sorry, awkward, that must have been someone else,’ I say, which is also a lie.
Declan just laughs, which really winds me up.
‘The office it is – for now,’ he says. ‘We’ll see how long you can resist me.’
I look away just in time, as Declan goes to remove his towel. I grab my cleaning products and head back downstairs. I’ll do the bathroom later, when Declan is somewhere else. I can shove him in the office for now – just like I did with most of our bags and boxes when we first moved in, while I figured out what to do with them. But there is no way in hell he’s going to be here on Christmas Day, not a chance. This house is already at capacity and even if it weren’t, he wouldn’t be welcome.
