The Things I Know(70)

Emery laughed loudly. ‘Oh yes, please!’ he grinned. ‘I could talk to you outside all day long!’ He too stood, and balled a fist.

‘Stop it! Just stop it!’ Thomasina yelled. This was not how she had seen the lovely meal ending.

‘Yes, just stop it, Change Purse!’ Emery pretended to lunge at Grayson across the table and he flinched.

‘You’re a bastard, Emery!’ he yelled. ‘I know how you’ve taunted her throughout her whole life, and it stops now! I know how shit it feels to listen to the crap people like you spout, just because it makes you feel a bit better, but I also know I’d rather be on the receiving end than have your brain and your nature. You are nothing!’

‘Is that right? Look at you – who the fuck are you?’ Emery fired.

‘Language, Emery!’ her dad yelled again, a little louder this time. ‘I will not have it in my house!’

The younger men ignored her dad and Thomasina felt rooted to the spot.

‘I know who I am, faults and all, and I know I am someone who would never taunt a person with words so cruel they cut her. That’s what you did to her!’ Grayson again spoke directly.

‘You’d better watch your back, mister.’ Emery snorted like a bull.

‘I’m not scared of you,’ Grayson said, looking him in the eye. ‘And if I’m not scared of you, what do you have left?’

Without warning, Emery grabbed his plate and hurled it towards Grayson, who ducked, leaving the plate free to hurtle through the air and land with an ear-splitting crack against the tiled wall behind the range. All five watched, shocked and with hearts hammering, as shards of floral china, meat, veggies and thick gravy slid down the wall, landing with a hiss near the hotplate.

‘Oh no!’ Mrs Waycott whimpered.

Thomasina yelled out, ‘Holy shit!’

‘What in the name of God is going on here?’ Her dad stood and drew himself up to his full height. ‘This is my home! My dinner table! And this is not how you behave! It’s not fair and I will not tolerate it!’ It was an uncharacteristic outburst from this usually most demure of men. ‘How dare you two argue like this, and how dare you throw food, break china in this kitchen! It’s a disgrace! You are a disgrace!’ His voice shook with an unfamiliar undercurrent of rage.

‘Grayson’s right, Pops – he is a bastard, and I wish I’d told him that years ago!’ Thomasina piped up. ‘It’s my home too and there have been many times, because of him’ – she pointed at Emery – ‘that I wanted to be anywhere else, and that’s not bloody fair!’

Emery looked from her to Grayson with a smirk. ‘I’m leaving before I do something we’ll all regret! But this isn’t over, you freak – not by a long shot!’ Emery spat the words at Grayson and glared at Thomasina before reaching for his coat and cap and heading back out into the darkness, slamming the door on the way out.

Grayson pushed his plate away and she knew that, as with her, his appetite was now non-existent. Her mum rinsed out a cloth and tended to the sticky brown splash on the wall.

Her dad stumbled back into his seat, a little overwhelmed by the exertion. ‘What in hell just happened? Good Lord, I have never known the like!’

Thomasina wasn’t sure if he was addressing her or Grayson. Both of them, probably.

Grayson looked at her dad and her heart flexed for him. ‘I’m sorry I shouted at your nephew in your kitchen.’ He looked at the barely touched plate of food in front of him. ‘I was just so angry.’

‘So I noticed.’

‘It’s not his fault, Pops,’ Thomasina said in his defence.

‘I think everyone just needs to calm down,’ her mum added from the range, looking at her husband over her shoulder in concern, trying to calm the situation.

Thomasina saw Grayson examine his hands and curl his fingers, in an effort to steady them, she thought. He then sat up straight in his seat.

‘Well, I’m not sorry,’ she stated, all eyes now on her. ‘I’m not sorry I stood up to him. And I’m not sorry that Grayson wants to stand up for me.’

‘Are you hearing this?’ her dad said in exasperation, addressing his wife and daughter. ‘I don’t understand: one minute we’re having a nice dinner and the next . . .’ He shook his head.

‘You know, Pops, Emery has upset me, impersonated me, laughed at me. He’s said and done some really terrible things, and I mean it, it’s not bloody fair.’

‘But’ – her lovely dad was struggling with the information – ‘he’s your cousin! Known you his whole life, like another brother.’

‘He is not like another brother!’ she corrected, thinking of Jonathan. ‘Not at all.’

‘But he’s been living here under our roof . . . Is it true, Hitch – Thomasina?’ he corrected himself, looking from his wife to his daughter and back again, as if hoping someone was going to help him figure out the puzzle, understand what in hell was going on. ‘Has he been mean to you?’

‘It’s true, Pops.’ She kept her voice steady, her stance firm. ‘He’s been disgusting to me. It’s not the gentle ribbing you think it is, not like with me and Jonathan, who love each other. Emery makes me feel like less than a person.’