Page 54 of Love and Loathing

Evie had pulled a face. “Maybe. A bit.”

“I knew this would happen,” Fi had announced, sitting back and nodding sagely to herself. “Saw his photo on the BlacktonGold website.”

Zig had stared at Evie through the screen, brow creased. “Are you? You’re literally sleeping with the enemy? What the fuck.”

He had disappeared from shot for a moment, walking off disgusted.

Fi had stared at Evie, biting her lip. “Bit awkward, this.”

“Yeah,” Evie had agreed softly.

“Do we have to tell FTP?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Is this it then? You’ve gone to the dark side?”

Zig had burst back onto the screen before Evie could answer. He was standing up, only just in frame behind the sofa where Fi sat.

“I can’t believe this, Evie. You of all people. I’m fucking… I’m fuckinghurt, OK? You know what these people are like. What they do. The harm they cause. How can you forget all that? These entitled, heartless, greedy fuckers, and you…you…”

“He’s not like that. Not really.”

“Just because he’s got a pretty face—”

“Pretty’s not quite the right word,” Fi had interjected musingly, but unhelpfully.

“You need to have a long, hard look at yourself,” Zig had said savagely. “Work out what the fuck you’re doing, and how the fuck you’re going to live with yourself.”

It hadn’t been much fun, as far as phone calls went. And the days since hadn’t been much fun either. How did one balance between two such opposing worlds? Surely it was only going to hurt, any attempt to cut herself in two.

But: “Ready?” Aubrey asked now, when they got out of his car. He walked around the front of it and took her hand. Together, they walked into the house.

Asha was gorgeous, and terrifying. And Charlie, Aubrey’s younger brother, looked almost exactly like the cute, chibi version of the man, his hair longer and slightly wavy, his eyes warmer and rounder, his mouth smiling non-stop. Andrew, the eldest, was tall, slim, and said nothing.

“Ignore the chatterbox,” Charlie said after dinner, dragging her away by the elbow after Andrew had gravely handed her a glass of juice, the wine not being vegan. “Come, sit.”

He installed her on a sofa next to him. There was a framed photograph on the small table beside it of all three brothers as children. Aubrey was in the middle, aged about five or six. Her heart gave an odd squeeze—that broody, motherly sort of feeling normally triggered by boxes of abandoned kittens. What would his children look like? Exactly like him, she imagined, and found herself smiling stupidly at the thought.

“Tell me everything,” Charlie prompted with a grin.

“About?” Evie said, laughing slightly.

“You, him, life, the world.”

She laughed again, amused by the thought that Charlie, in his wavy-haired, good-natured, starry-eyed exuberance was far more like the kind of guy she normally went for than his brother. He saved refugees for a living. Looked like he bathed in mountain streams and dewdrops. And he was happily married, his husband absent because he was, Charlie had explained loudly and fondly when they first arrived, working nights as a junior doctor on an emergency ward.

“You see now,” Aubrey had said into her ear, “why I’m the black sheep of the family.”

“Little lost sheep,” Priya had quipped, grinning, as she squeezed past, bowls of nuts in her hands. “Vegan,” she’d said, putting them on the coffee table with a smile at Evie.

She sat by that coffee table now with Charlie, helping herself to a handful of nuts, but not really hungry, because Priya had assembled a generous meal from all the various side dishes. A lot of the food she’d prepared was vegan anyway, she explained, balancing another samosa on Evie’s laden plate.

Asha was across the room, having a mild disagreement with her dad about the mobile phone she wanted for hernextbirthday, Priya was inexhaustibly bustling around, and Aubrey was sitting in the window seat of the large bay window nearby. There was a small tabby cat on his knee, writhing in ecstasy as he absently rubbed it behind the ears with a knuckle while talking with Andrew.

“And it worked, did it?” Andrew asked. “No push back?”

“Of course not,” Aubrey replied. “Cash-strapped local governments aren’t going to spend time quibbling. They’ll take the money and run.”

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