AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Aw.” Mum sits back in her chair. “What’s she like?”
I hesitate. “Beautiful,” I say. Then my smile fades. “And damaged.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees, and link my fingers. “All joking aside, I need to tell you a bit about her.”
I proceed to give them a summary of what she told me the other night. Kip and Damon know some of it, but not all, and gradually their brows furrow as I explain. About her mum dying, and her going to live with her father and his wife. Her father dying, leaving her with her stepmother and stepsisters. And about how they treated her, beating her occasionally, mocking her, not giving her any money, and—worst of all in my eyes—not giving her food.
“Oh no.” There are genuine tears in my mother’s eyes. “Saxon, that’s awful.”
“She ran away several times. Lived on the streets. Thought about going on the game, or even taking her own life.”
Kip frowns, and Damon blows out a breath. My father’s gone still. “It’s abuse,” he snaps, “pure and simple.”
“Yeah. She even told a teacher, but all they did was call her stepmother in. She denied it and made out that Catie was badly behaved, then beat her when she got home.”
He shakes his head. “Jesus.”
I inhale, then exhale slowly. “But she decided she wasn’t going to let it beat her. Eventually she went back and stayed in her room for a year while she finished school and did secretarial placements. Then she left and got a room with a friend. She taught herself coding in the evenings and she’s been designing websites and mobile apps. She saved up so she could move down here and start again. And she’s done it all by herself, with nobody she could turn to for help. She’s incredibly brave and resolute. She’s also terrified, and clueless about pregnancy and babies.”
“Oh, the poor girl,” Mum whispers.
“She’s worried that I’ll think she found me because she wants my money.”
“She didn’t,” Kip says, “I can vouch for that. She mistook me for Saxon, and she definitely didn’t fake her shock. And when she saw him, she fainted.”
I shrug. “Knockout personality.”
“Ah, don’t joke,” Mum says, “I think I’m going to cry. Was she pleased to see you?”
I think of how bristly she was after she fainted. “Not hugely. But I think she liked it when I told her she’s not alone now.”
A tear runs down Mum’s face, and she presses her fingers to her lips.
“God, don’t you start,” I scold, reaching out to hold her hand.
Dad pulls her chair toward him so he can hug her. “No, she’s not alone now,” he says to her firmly. “We’ll look after her.” He looks back at me. “What can we do?”
“I’m working on it. It’s only been five days since she came into the office. She’s very reluctant to take anything from me, but I introduced her to Kennedy, who I think is trying to convince her to bleed me dry.”
They all chuckle, well aware of what my cousin is like.
“We’ve decided to start up a uni program at Kingpinz,” Damon says. “Saxon’s idea, with Catie as the first member. She’ll work under Richard Mason and train on the job, and study for a computer science degree at Vic at the same time.”
“That’s a great idea,” Dad says.
“It’ll give her independence,” I reply, “and make her feel less reliant on me. For everything else… like I said, I’m working on it. The main thing I’m trying to do is get her to eat healthily. She’s way too thin, and of course now we know she’s having twins she needs even more calories.”
“Who’s her lead maternity carer?”
“Dad, she hadn’t even had a pregnancy test. She doesn’t have a GP or a midwife. I practically had to drag her to Mathew Clinton’s place for the dating scan because she looked bigger than eighteen weeks.”
He meets my eyes, and I wonder whether he’s going to ask if the babies are definitely mine.
After holding my gaze for a moment, though, he just nods. “Okay.”
“When can we meet her?” Mum asks with a sniff.
“I’m going to Auckland tomorrow, so I thought next Saturday for lunch?”
“Okay.”
