Page 24 of Slow Burn Summer

“Is it serious?”

“Serious enough for her to want to spend the summer in Australia with his family.”

“What? She’s not coming home?”

Kate’s voice skittered up an octave and her heart missed a beat, her mind skipping straight to the thought of Alice emigrating and barely seeing her apart from on FaceTime.

“I’ll talk to her,” she sighed. No doubt that was the purpose of Richard’s visit, to let her play bad cop to his good cop, the one who didn’t bounce with sunshine at the news.

Liv moved stealthily behind him with a Roman sword held aloft and mimed plunging it between his shoulder blades, then lowered it behind her back when he turned to leave.

“You’ve always been strange,” he muttered.

“And you’ve never been good enough for my sister,” she shot back, following him to the door to make sure he actually left.

Kate watched from behind the counter, nursing a lukewarm cup of coffee, her mind miles away with Alice. She’d call her later, get to the bottom of things.

13

“Hey, Alice, it’s Mum.”

It had taken three straight-to-voicemail calls before Alice finally picked up, and Kate heard her daughter’s half laugh, half sigh rattle around the kitchen. She’d spent the afternoon wondering how best to get Alice to confide in her about the Australian guy without coming straight out and saying Richard had already filled her in. Parenting 101—don’t back them into a corner, it never ends well.

“I know it’s you, Mum, your name came up on my screen.”

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” Kate said. “I’ve got you on speakerphone. Tell me your news while I make spaghetti.”

Alice groaned. “You’re making spaghetti? I wish I was there.”

“I wish you were too,” Kate said, staring longingly at her phone as she chopped onions. “Not long now though, Al, summer break soon. I’ll make spaghetti for your welcome home dinner.”

So far, so good. She heard her daughter’s small intake of breath and nervous silence and she waited, fighting the urge to jump in.

“Um, I need to talk to you about that actually, Mum.” Another pregnant pause, and Kate pressed her fingers to her lips to stop herself from saying the wrong thing.

“Oh?”

She could picture Alice on the other end of the line, screwing her nose up as she always did when she was trying to talk her way out of something.

“I’ve been asked to go to Australia! Mum, I’ve been holding back on telling you this because I didn’t want you to start, but I’ve met this boy, Flynn. He’s Australian, and he’s finished studying now so he’s going home, and he’s asked me if I’ll go with him, and—”

“Whoa, whoa! Hang on, let me catch up.” Kate forced a laugh, trying to sound lighthearted when she felt anything but. “Tell me all about him, then, what’s he like?”

Alice let out a rom-com-worthy sigh. “Oh, Mum, he’s so cool, he looks like one of the Hemsworth brothers and he makes me laugh all the time. We only met a couple of months ago but it feels as if I’ve known him forever, do you know what I mean? He’s been doing business studies here, and now he’s going home to open his own surf shack on the beach in Queensland. I know it probably sounds crazy to you because you haven’t met him yet, but he’s asked me to go with him, and I was thinking I could maybe defer my studies for a year, see how it goes? You know I always said I wanted to go traveling…”

“But it’s hardly the same thing, is it? You’ve made such a great start at uni and made some good friends on your course too, I really don’t think it’s a wise move right now.”

“I knew you’d be like this,” Alice sighed, the bubbles gone from her voice. “I’m nineteen now, Mum, old enough to make my own decisions.”

Kate laid the onion knife down and sat at the kitchen table, staring at her mobile in front of her. She was desperate to find the right words.

“Look, Al, I’m not saying I don’t understand. I do, more thanyou can imagine, actually. I was about the same age when I married your dad and moved to Germany, remember?”

“Exactly! Mum, you can’t really criticize my decisions when you made the same ones yourself, can you?”

Kate screwed her eyes closed, willing herself not to say something that painted Richard in a bad light.

“With the benefit of hindsight, I made some unwise decisions,” she said. “I should have focused on my own career and dated your dad long distance rather than given up my dreams for his. You have such ambition, Al, and you love your new life in Leeds.”

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