Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute(14)

“I’ll. Drive. You. Pay attention, Celine.” He grabs his bag and heads for the door.

“Wha— Where are you going?”

“I do have better things to do than hang around here, you know.” He falters, then looks over his shoulder. “I’ll meet you outside the Beech Hut after school, okay?”

I open my mouth to say, Um, no, not okay. What are you up to, you sneaky, slimy snake?! But the thing is…

Well, I hate the bus. And I don’t want to be all sweaty and tired when I see Katharine. And he does owe me, and shockingly, he is decent enough to know that, which is the bare minimum, so…

“Fine,” I say.

Just like that, I agree to voluntarily share a space with Bradley Graeme for the first time in almost four years. I am still dazed and confused by this series of events ten minutes later when Mum wanders into my room and sits on the edge of my bed.

“Has my room recently been declared a public thoroughfare?” I wonder aloud.

“Mouth,” Mum says in a tone that would terrify most of my friends but is only a 3 out of 10 on my mother’s annoyance scale. She must be tired. I focus on her face and strongly dislike what I see.

“Hard day at work?”

She tuts. “Isn’t it always? Those children are trying to kill me. So is my daughter, apparently.” She slides a reproving look at my cast. “What, are you doing parkour at school now? Consider my blood pressure, Celine.”

“Nobody does parkour, Mum.” And my mother doesn’t have high blood pressure, which is a miracle, considering what my dad put her through.

We look very alike, by which I mean, neither of us smile easily because we don’t have the time or the patience. People would be so shocked if they knew that, when my parents divorced, she let Dad off easy with the settlement and the child maintenance payments. At the time, I didn’t really understand what she was doing. I was confused by the arguments she had with Bradley’s mum, the ones I overheard by lurking on the staircase.

“He has twins now, Maria. Babies aren’t cheap.”

“That’s his problem! All of his children are his problem, so make him pay.”

“We don’t need that much—”

“Don’t be proud, Neneh.”

But that’s how Bangura women are: proud. So, she proudly accepted the absolute minimum from my so-called dad, and she proudly worked herself to the bone while studying full-time. She proudly bulk-bought our necessities with carefully cut-out coupons and she proudly worked her way up from a trainee teacher’s salary to her school’s assistant head. We’re not poor anymore.

But it’s too late. She looks tired in a way rest can’t fix and it’s because of us, because of me and Giselle and…him.

I can tell Mum’s extra exhausted today; her usually glowing skin is dull, and she’s thrown a green and blue headwrap over her hair instead of styling it. Glasses sit on her broad nose in place of her usual contacts. When I’m an adult, when I’m successful, when I’m rich, she can lie in bed all day eating Godiva chocolates instead of dragging herself to work.

But I’m not rich yet, so all I can say is, “What time did you go to bed last night?”

“Bed?” She blinks theatrically. “Oh! After a lifetime of sleeping, I forgot it was necessary. Must be my old lady brain acting up again.”

“Isn’t there something in the Bible about sarcasm being a sin?”

“No,” Mum says primly.

“There should be.”

“Pot,” my sister shouts from across the hall, “meet kettle.”

“Go away, Giselle,” I shout back.

Mum snorts, then arranges her features into a carefully neutral expression. “So. Bradley was concerned about your health, I see? How nice. He is such a sweet boy. You know—”

Ah. Here we go: the What happened to you and Bradley being best friends? spiel. “He was just bringing me my textbook,” I cut in, nodding to where it sits on the bedside table.

Mum practically pouts. “Oh. Well.” She has this sick and twisted dream that Bradley and I will get married so she and Maria Graeme can be even more like sisters. I’m trying not to vomit at the thought when Mum says, “Oh, what’s this?” and pulls the leaflet out of my textbook.

“Private property,” I tell her, “that’s what it is.”

“Not in my house.” Mum snorts. Light bounces off the back of the shiny paper and hits the printed logo of Dad’s firm. My heart drops into my stomach.

Crap.

“Katharine Breakspeare,” Mum says, skimming the page. “You’re going to do this?”

Awkwardly, I squeak, “I’m…going to apply.” How the hell do I get that leaflet out of her hand? She can’t see Dad’s name. She’ll get the wrong idea and assume I’m interested in the program because I’m, like, upset about his abandonment or something cringey like that when, in reality, I just want to grind my future success in his traitorous face and possibly ruin his life a little bit. Which I can do without ever bothering her with the details.

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get in, baby,” she says fondly. “You’re so clever. I told Mr. Hollis at school about your AS results and he was not surprised. You were the highest-achieving pupil Farndon Primary ever had. I still remember your year-four parents evening….”