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“Not at first, but as his addiction worsened, he’d disappear on me for nights at a time. He got in with some pretty dodgy blokes and I didn’t like spending time with them.” She shivered. “Mostly, I just felt really lonely,” she whispered.
Beneath the table, his spare hand gripped his leg, hard.
“And what did you do, when he was gone? Where did you sleep?”
She frowned, as if not understanding. “Where I always did. There’s a bridge, by the aquarium. We had a spot there.”
He swore under his breath, anger like a beam splitting him in two.
“One time, days and days went by and I hadn’t seen Dale. No one had. I feared the worst, went around to all the hospitals. He’d been clipped by a tram and fallen onto the tracks. Thank God, he wasn’t badly hurt—just a broken wrist. But the hospital had a social worker, and she offered to get him into rehab, and to try to help me. I really think she did try, Anastasios, but the systems aren’t easy to navigate, and there was no community housing available to a fifteen year old. I’d have had to go into foster care, and having just escaped my dad, I was terrified of who I’d end up living with.”
“So you stayed on the streets?” He tried to curb the disapproval from his voice but hell, he’d have moved heaven and earth to go back in time and make it so that she never had to face that awful decision.
“And Dale bounced in and out of rehab. After the first stint, I was able to get him into a private facility as a trial. I was desperate and idealistic. If they could just make him better, everything would be okay. I’d find a way to pay, somehow.”
He stared at her, fascinated and full of admiration for her decisions. “By then, I was eighteen. The social worker had found me a job—just taking payments at a service station, but it was enough. I could make some payments on the facility,”
“Instead of rent?” He interrupted.
“Yes,” she bit down on her lower lip.
“So you were still living rough?”
“I’d worked out how to live by then. I knew the safest spots, where I wouldn’t be bothered.”
“Christos.”
“It’s not as bad as you might think.”
“If that’s true, it’s simply a credit to your attitude, nothing more.”
She lifted her shoulders then paused, as their drinks appeared, along with an antipasto platter.
“Leave them,” Anastasios dismissed the waiter.
“Thank you,” Phoebe offered a bright smile to compensate for Anastasios’ shortness. “You know, if you’d spoken to me like that, I’d probably have spat in your food.”
“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.”
