Page 6 of Love and Loathing

“No. No. Don’t worry. I’ll ask someone else,” Aubrey said firmly, knowing full well there was no one else he would trust with this. “Don’t worry, Roscoe.” He smiled at his friend. “I’m a big boy. I’ll be fine.”

THREE

Evie, coming back fromthe bathroom, couldn’t help but overhear some of Roscoe and Aubrey’s conversation. She paused in the hall, just before the kitchen door, then nearly collided with Aubrey’s tall figure when he emerged, walking briskly, holding a large cheesecake.

Poppy had already told her it was vegan, and Evie felt a flash of satisfaction knowing the man would hate every mouthful. But he merely nodded briefly as he stepped around her, not meeting her eyes. She watched him reach the living room, then she dived into the kitchen where Roscoe was rinsing a handful of cutlery.

“Who’s Liv?”

Her brother gave her a disbelieving look. “Surely you’ve grown out of listening at doorways?”

“I wasn’t listening. You men have very loud voices. I was merely an innocent passerby, caught in the auditory splashback.”

Roscoe pulled a face. “What a mental image. Thank you for that.”

“Is she an ex?” Evie persisted, coming to stand against the counter right by his elbow. “Did she crush his non-existent heart?”

The look Roscoe gave her now was genuinely annoyed, and she felt a moment’s guilt. It was easily cured, though, remembering Aubrey’s smug smile, his obvious delight in revealing the unethical nature of his work. They didn’t realise, these men in their offices, how their actions affected the world. Or they did, and they didn’t care. But there were schools and hospitals and children’s centres closing due to lack of funds, a million sorrows created every day, and all of it could be fixed if men like Domnall White would just pay their share. It drove her mad! It was soobvious, such old news, so boring to be the one harping on about it and waving words likesocietyandresponsibilityandfairnessaround. Everyone hated her for it.“You make yourself unlikeable,”her mother had once told her.“You put people’s backs up and make life hard for yourself, and it’s all your own doing.”But she was past caring, resigned to being shrewish and nagging and unfeminine in her dogged refusal to comply, acquiesce, sit still and smile.No,she wouldn’t shut up.No,she wouldn’t just let it rest.Yes,she would ruin the mood at dinner parties because a street or two away people werestarvingand it was unbearable.She wanted to scream.

“It’s none of your business,” Roscoe said. “I’m not sharing Aubrey’s private life with you.”

“How can you be friends with him?”

“He’s a good man.”

She scoffed. “Good? When he almost literally steals money from—”

“Libraries and hospitals and yes, yes, I know.”

“You turned your back on that work, Roscoe. You don’t believe it’s right.”

“Evie.” He turned the tap off, looked her in the eye, giving her the wise big brother look as though she was still eight and crying over roadkill squirrels. “You need to learn to separate the person from the job. Separate the sin from the sinner, or whatever that quote is.”

“That would be convenient, wouldn’t it?” she said acidly. “If none of us had to answer for our actions. Is that how they excuse it to themselves?”

Roscoe gave a tired sigh. “You used to be so sweet, Eve. You’d love everything and everyone. When did you get so bitter?”

“When I realised that playing nice gets you nowhere.”

It was more or less what Zig had said. She recognised it with a sense of bleak inevitability, something deep inside her getting crushed. If she was bitter, it was only what the world had made her. The hopeful earth of the community garden turning hard and flat under the bulldozer’s wheels.

She spent the rest of the evening talking determinedly to Poppy, trying to make amends for the shadow she’d thrown over dinner. It was a familiar feeling, this guilt. Because despite all her internal protestations about being the unflinching, shrewish one sacrificing herself for the greater good, she didn’t like hurting people’s feelings. Not people like Poppy, whom she already loved. She was almost as besotted with her as her brother was.

“Marry her,” she whispered to Roscoe as she stood up to leave. He followed her to the hallway, smiling, his earlier irritation already forgotten.

“That’s the plan.”

She abandoned putting her shoe on and stared at him, face split with glee. “Really?”

“I’ll let Hugo go first. Don’t want to steal his thunder.”

“Hm,” she said noncommittally, returning to the business of her shoes. The fact her very best friend was with her eldest brother had taken some getting used to. She was happy for them. She was also intensely lonely, the few areas of Amelia’s life that weren’t taken up with the all-consuming job of managing an entire estate now occupied by her annoying big brother.

“You next?” suggested Roscoe with a hint of apology at touching on a raw subject.

“God, no.” Then, a sudden suspicion occurring to her, she gave Roscoe a sharp look. “That’s not why you invitedhim, is it? Tell me you’re not playing matchmaker?”

He grimaced. “For my little sister? No. Definitely not. And I wouldn’t anyway. Not with Aubrey.”

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