Page 238 of Swallow Your Sorries

Plop!

And indescribable fury flares through me.

The sound of tinkling metal fills the silence as I swipe the can out of my sight. It falls onto the gearshift, dinging Mum’s hand before tumbling and disappearing under her foot, still mashing the brake pedal to the floor.

“Mmm,” Mum stirs, but I don’t look at her. I stare straight ahead through the tinted glass at the domed roof of the theatre. The theatre hundreds of people are moving towards. The theatre I should be in, getting into the lineup. The theatre I’d snuck out of just to get a quick hug and a bout of reassurance from someone who didn’t hate me. Or used to hate me.

“Ellie?” Mum croaks, lifting her head from the wheel, and I swear I hear the sticky, filmy sound of her skin peeling away from the leather as she does.

Gone is her shiny hair. Her pretty almond nails. Her groomed brows. But her face animates as she stares at my costume, half hidden beneath my coat.

“Ellie, you look so beautiful!” She practically screams in my ear as she clings to my neck. Her frosty breath’s stale, like her body odour that’s not bad, it’s just old, like she hasn’t changed in two days but it’s too cold so the funk hasn’t brewed enough for her to reek to high heaven just yet but it will in a day or two.

She’s grinning so widely, so falsely that I can see the black fillings in her molars.

“What is wrong with you?” I ask slowly, peeling her arms from my neck and she’s so wobbly that she immediately slumps against her seat for support. “Seriously, what is wrong with you?” I don’t just mean the liquor.

“What do you mean?” she slurs, wiping drool from her chin before staring around the car park and zooming in on the thinning crowd heading for the theatre. It’s nearly showtime. “Why are we still in the car?” She turns to me, brows knitted, her fingers already curling around the door handle. “The show…isn’t it about to start?”

I ignore her. “The drive here is over three hours. You drank the entire way over?”

“Of course not.” She waves a hand dismissively. “I was right down the street at a bar. The Happy Hole or something.”

Or something.

But we both know it’s the Watering Hole. Jarett’s favourite bar.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” I ask.

“What?”

Her feigned ignorance makes my neck damn near crick with how fast I turn it to finally glare at her. “Jarett. Did you find him at the bar? I know you miss him. I know you’ve been looking for him. That’s why you’re suddenly drinking his favourite drink. Why you’re buying all those scratchers. Why you’re getting dolled up to go to the Watering Hole.”

Well, Mum’s version of getting dolled up. She has on heels. Chunky kitten heels. She never could walk in stilettos. And she’s wearing a square neck top. It may be plain cotton, but it’s as fancy as she can muster. It’s in Jarett’s favourite colour too, orange, which clashes atrociously with her flaming red hair.

Suddenly, it all makes sense.

The drinking.

The new wardrobe.

The carefree, sixteen-year-old Jaime Jarett fell in contempt with.

“Did you think with all that money you won, you could convince him to come crawling back to you?” I pause. “Is that why you made a social media profile? Why you look like you were posing for a rock music magazine in the newspaper article. You were hoping to lure Jarett out of hiding?”

“Ellie?”

“Why?” I ask softly, my voice cracking. “So he could spend all the money, treat you like trash and leave again?”

“You don’t know Jarett like I do.”

“Like you think you did.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Elle?”

“That you idolise a Jarett that didn’t exist. A Jarett and Jaime that didn’t exist. J and J,” I mock. “Can’t you see that Jarett never loved you?”

“You weren’t there.”

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