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‘Jess, are you serious?’ I say. ‘He’s not a good guy – just go upstairs and ask Declan, if you don’t believe me.’
‘Oh, yeah, because Declan is greeeeat, I can totally trust every word that he says,’ she replies sarcastically. ‘You know what, I think family game night is over. I’m going next door to see Kenny, because – as we all agreed tonight – a woman can do whatever she wants, and whoever she wants, and I make my own decisions. Thank you.’
Jess gets up from the table and walks away.
‘I, erm, I think I’m going to go lie down,’ I tell Mum and Dad.
‘Of course, don’t worry, we can clean up,’ Mum reassures me.
‘And your sister will somehow come to her senses,’ Dad chimes in. ‘She doesn’t have your head on her shoulders, you know how the world is, but she’ll work things out for herself sooner or later.’
‘Aw, Rowan, that’s a lovely thing to say about Billie,’ Mum tells him through a smile as she reaches out to squeeze his shoulder.
I head upstairs with my tail between my legs. Not just because the game backfired, and because I’ve just driven Jess further into Kenny’s arms, but because the whole point of this game was to show Mum and Dad how wrong they are together and to drive them further apart.
Somehow, I feel like I’ve only pushed them further together too. And there’s me thinking I was good at creating romance-free zones. Well, I’ve been doing an excellent job for myself, at least.
Would it be the worst thing in the world if my parents got back together? Yes. Yes, it would. I’m just going to have to come up with something else. But what? I have no idea.
23
I would say you can’t beat a bath for trying to de-stress yourself, except my long soak is finally going to have to come to an end, because someone in this house is playing music far too loudly. I can hear the humming through the bathroom door.
I grab my towel and dry off my hair lightly with it, before wrapping it around my body, pulling out the plug, and heading back into the bedroom.
It’s only once I’m standing in the en suite doorway, looking into my bedroom, that I realise where the music is coming from. It’s coming from inside my room – a room that doesn’t look like it did when I closed the door to have my bath, that’s for sure.
In a room filled with lit candles and rose petals scattered everywhere, I see Declan lying on the bed, in a pair of black boxer shorts that have seen better days, a pair of odd socks and nothing else apart from a smile. When I enter the room, he cranks up the volume on Another Level’s ‘Freak Me’ – oh, my God, he’s trying to seduce me.
‘Declan, what are you doing?’ I ask him. ‘Turn that down.’
‘I’m trying to recreate the magic from the first time we had sex,’ he tells me.
‘Well, you might have considered recreating the alleged magic from the first time you had sex with me,’ I point out. ‘Candles and Another Level weren’t what I got, I got four minutes – that felt like two minutes – after we got in from a night out. And then I watched TV while you snored next to me.’
All true, sadly.
‘Turn it down,’ I say again, purposefully lowering my voice, so that Declan will have to turn the music down, if he wants to talk.
‘Come on, you know you fancy a bit of rumpy pumpy,’ he says, thankfully reducing the music slightly, although I would rather not have heard what he just said.
‘Hard as it is to resist a man who calls it “rumpy pumpy”,’ I start sarcastically, ‘given the fact that my parents are on the other side of those walls, did you really think I would have gone for this, even if I wanted to?’
‘You didn’t mind that night in Manchester,’ he starts.
‘Once again, not me,’ I point out.
I really hope none of these mix-ups are from people he slept with behind my back while we were together but, also, I genuinely don’t care any more.
‘Billie, I’ve missed you,’ he tells me, changing course. ‘Leaving you was a mistake. Let me show you just how much I’ve missed you, and how much I’ve missed our life together.’
Declan approaches me with puckered lips.
‘You’ve missed having someone pay for everything, so you don’t have to work,’ I point out. ‘You’re here because you have nowhere else to go.’
I, unsurprisingly, don’t allow Declan to kiss me. Instead, I grab him and frogmarch him to the bedroom door. I’m about to throw him – and his corny, horny music – out when I notice Gail, down the hallway, arriving back from her work thing earlier than I was expecting. She stares at us, so I quickly pull Declan back into the bedroom. I’m grateful for small mercies – at least he had underwear on.
‘Listen, go to your room, this isn’t going to happen,’ I tell him. ‘You’re here for Christmas and that’s it.’
