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“You’re kidding?”
“Yes,” she rolled her eyes. “But you shouldn’t have been so rude.”
“I’ll apologise when he brings our meals,” Anastasios said with a hint of sarcasm. “How did you end up living in London, then?”
“Oh, that came later. First, there was the endless saga of Dale’s rehab, relapses, rehab, the emotional rollercoaster of seeing someone you love hurt themselves like that. Have you ever seen someone who’s addicted to ice?”
He regarded her for several beats. “Not personally.”
She shivered. “Good. It transforms people. He would go from being my sweet, dumb big brother to—,” she shook her head sadly. “He’d be so like dad.”
“He hit you?”
“No! Just once,” she amended. “And by accident. He was trying to stay standing and swung out to reach the wall but I was between him and the wall, and got a slap across my face. It was an accident.”
He could think of nothing to say. He was at an atomic level of rage.
She sipped her drink.
“For a year or so, he got clean. We rented a little apartment, and things were looking good. I even enrolled in night school, to graduate high school.”
The noise he made was involuntary as his throat constricted. “But then, he started using again. I didn’t realise for months. He lost his job, and mine wasn’t enough to cover rent. He refused to go into rehab. Two months later, he died.”
Anastasios squeezed her hand. “I’m very sorry, Phoebe.”
“I just wish there was something more I could have done. But addiction is such a fearsome beast, and he was so completely in its thrall. His life had been a disaster. Dad was awful to him. I think he had to do what he did in order to blot his memories.”
“It sounds like you did everything you could, and then some.”
She lifted her shoulders. “I was working as a waitress by then, in a little bar near Fed Square. The money was good, and the customers nice. I became friendly with a woman who told me about a nannying job in London. The annual salary would have been enough to clear Dale’s rehab debts in two years, plus, I’d get a chance to travel. Airfare was all covered, too. It was a dream come true, a truly fresh start.”
“Hmm,” he said, skeptically.
“Yes, well, unfortunately, I didn’t share your wise cynicism. I naïvely believed some fairy Godmother had waved her magic wand. I signed on the dotted line and was whisked over to London and taken to meet my employers.”
“But you didn’t like it?”
She shivered. “There were no children. It was a porn agency. They figured that because they’d paid my airfare and advanced me ten thousand pounds, I had no choice but to star in their movies.”
“You cannot be serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious,” she said, shaking her head.
“What did you do?”
“What do you think I did? I ran away. I hid on the streets—but it was winter, and London is nothing like Melbourne. It was scary, Anastasios.”
Again, that protective instinct fired to life.
“I refused to let myself fall backwards. I’d come so far. I signed up at an employment agency, who got me a job working at the restaurant straight away. I saw an ad for Mrs Langham’s bedsit and went to meet with her. She was very kind, and very supportive, and told me I could pay her rent in a few weeks, when I had the money, so I was, very luckily, able to start working.”
He saw the bedsit through her eyes now, not as a dingy, tiny space, but as a godsend, a sanctuary when she’d most badly needed it.
“I’d already used the ten thousand pounds to go towards the Rehab centre, and they wouldn’t refund it, so I still owe money to the porn company.”
He made a gruff sound of disagreement. “I beg your pardon, you owe themnothing.”
She brushed him off with a tight smile.
