Page 28 of Away With You
It doesn’t feel like morning.
The sun hasn’t defeated the night sky, and the stars are still out and about doing their thing. So, if it’s not morning yet, why on Earth is my phone ringing? And why on earth is the person making it ring, my mother?
“If I don’t answer, she’ll just keep calling,” I remind myself after my phone goes blissfully silent, only to start back up again a few seconds later.
“Mother,” I say after several blind attempts at swiping my phone. My voice is rough with sleep, and I screw my eyes shut to trick my brain into thinking this isn’t really happening. If I can get this call over and done with quickly, there’s still a chance I can fall back asleep.
“Nathan.” She’s only said one word and already sounds disappointed.How is that possible?“Are you still in bed?”
Giving in, I squint at my phone. It’s 6.13 a.m.Of course I’m still in bed!
“What’s up?” I ask, throwing my arm over my eyes. “Is everything okay?”
“No, Nathan. Everything is not okay.”
My body tenses, on alert. “Is it Rosie? Dad? What’s happened?”
She huffs. “Did you go on a date last night?”
What?
“What?”
“Nathan, you know I can’t abide by that word. If you must be confused, use the word ‘pardon’.”
I’m too tired and too twenty-eight years old for this.
“Pardon?” I squeeze through my clenched teeth.
“A date. Did you go on one last night? Are you seeing someone?”
My mind scrambles to play catch up. Last night I was with Katie, and as much as I’d like to think differently, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a date.But how can my mother know about any of this?
“Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I met a friend for dinner last night. Why? What’s going on?”
The phone next to my ear vibrates. “Thisis what I woke up to,” she says in that snooty tone of hers. The same one that made me long to be sent to boarding school as a kid. “I had to hear about my son’s love life from theinternet.”
She says the word ‘internet’ the same way she’d say the word ‘pornography’. Like it's something dirty and beneath her.
I take in a deep breath and peel one eyelid open. Moving the phone away from my ear, I open the attachment she’d just sent. It’s an article from a gossip magazine, with the headline “F1 star moves on.” Underneath this is a photo taken last night. In it, I’m in clear view, looking enamoured by the woman sitting across from me. A woman with an unmistakable waterfall of chestnut waves down her back and an ugly winter coat over her chair.
Thank goodness, Katie is unrecognisable in this photo.
I blow out the breath I’ve been holding. “I was out for dinner with a friend, Mother. You should know better than to trust anything you read in a magazine.”
Especially this magazine. Last month, it published an article about me in a supposed arranged marriage with a Saudi Arabian princess. It may as well be published under the fiction category at this rate.
“So, it’s not true?” Her voice wavers, screaming her disappointment. “Because, if you were seeing someone, that would make things easier for everyone.”
And that’s the crux of every conversation I’ve had with her since my brother started dating my ex-girlfriend. There wasn’t even a moment where she was concerned about me, about my feelings. She had not one ounce of recrimination for my brother, who committed this act of betrayal. Instead, she dived straight into damage control. For the family name and the family image. And she’s been putting pressure on me to do my part ever since.
“Funnily enough, I’m not really interested in making things easier for anyone right now.”
“Nathan,” she chides, like I’m being an unruly child throwing a tantrum to get a later bedtime. “Hasn’t this gone on long enough? Your brother has said he’s sorry; can’t we all just move on?”
George, my older brother, has, in fact,notsaid he was sorry. The man has barely said two words to me since this all happened. He hasn’t looked me in the eye. And yet, I’m the one who’s supposed to make nice; make it better for the sake of the family.
Never going to happen.
