Page 25 of One Step Behind
‘You’re not eating cereal. I’ll make you a protein smoothie. You’ll need it after your run.’ He crosses to the kitchen in four long strides and starts pulling out fruit and spinach from the fridge.
Nick’s smoothies look like the vomit inThe Exorcistand taste just as bad. A memory flashes in my head of my old friend Vicky, and the two of us eating popcorn on her bedroom floor, hiding our faces behind our pillows every time something scary happened, and giggling like a pair of loons as we did. We must have been twelve or thirteen at the time. It was my first sleepover and I didn’t want to tell Vicky how scared I really was.
I shove the memory aside, surprised by its appearance in my thoughts, and mutter a ‘Thanks’ to Nick. There is no point arguing with him when he’s like this. If I was still living on my own I’d open a huge bag of crisps and eat the lot. We don’t even keep crisps in the apartment.
My phone lights up and I open Instagram for the hundredth time today. Another reason for my flat battery. Greg has tagged me in a photo of him posing like a macho man in front of the mirror. He’s pouting like a model and there’s a cheeky glint in his eye that makes me smile. It’s like so many of the photos on my feed, except Greg’s is a joke. He’s a long way off from losing the dad belly and having a body like Nick’s.
‘What are you looking at?’ Nick asks.
I lift my head to meet his gaze. ‘Nothing much.’
‘Are you playing Candy Crush again? You need to give that game a rest.’
‘No,’ I reply, shaking my head. ‘I deleted it.’After you nagged and nagged me to stop playing it.
I’m about to leave a comment under Greg’s photo when the display changes and my phone rings with an incoming call. Trevor’s name appears on the screen and I sit bolt upright, staring at his name and wondering what it means that he’s calling me.
Mum.
‘Are you going to answer that?’ Nick snaps, slamming the fridge shut.
Come on, Soph. Answer.
‘Hi. Is everything OK?’ I ask, pressing the phone to my ear. My insides turn to jelly and I fold my legs close to my body, steeling myself for what is to come. Neither Trevor nor my mum has ever made a secretof how they feel about me and Matthew. If he’s calling me, it can only be bad news.
‘Sophie. There you are. I’ve been trying to call.’ Trevor’s voice sparks a thousand memories; like ghosts being released from a box, they fly around my head until my thoughts are spinning.
‘I … Sorry, my phone was off,’ I say. ‘Is Mum OK?’Please, please, please say she is.My throat starts to ache and the threat of tears throbs behind my eyes.
‘She’s fine. It’s your brother. The police came by earlier.’
‘What?’
‘He was hit by a bus this afternoon. He’s in a coma in intensive care at Westbury District Hospital.’
I close my eyes, shutting out the room. Emotions explode inside me. Relief first – nothing has happened to Mum. Then guilt. Bile rises up to the back of my throat. Matthew was acting weird the last time I saw him. He wanted to talk to me and I wouldn’t let him. This is my fault.
‘Matthew isn’t like you and me, Sophie. He doesn’t see the world the same way we do. We need to protect him.’
There’s a silence on the line and it takes me a moment to realize Trevor is waiting for me to speak. ‘Is he … is he OK?’
‘I don’t know. It sounds pretty serious. The police think someone pushed him. They asked me if he was in any kind of trouble—’
‘He’s not.’ I jump to Matthew’s defence without any thought as to what I believe. Same old, same old.
‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ Trevor replies with a bitter tone I remember so well. ‘I told the policethat we have nothing to do with Matthew any more and they should be speaking to you.’
From the corner of my eye Nick waves his hands at me, mouthing a ‘What’s going on?’ When I don’t answer, he switches on the NutriBullet and the apartment is filled with the hum of the rotating blades.
‘How did Mum take the news?’ I ask when the blender stops.
Now it’s Trevor’s turn to be silent and I picture him in a tartan dressing gown and matching slippers, sitting in the kitchen of his house, probably drinking a mug of Horlicks. I want to ask where Mum is right now. Is she asleep or sitting beside him? I wish it was her calling me, her voice in my ear instead of just in my thoughts.
‘You know how it is, Sophie. She doesn’t like to be reminded,’ Trevor says eventually. ‘I should go.’
He ends the call and I let the emptiness sweep through me. I do know how it is. Mum can’t forgive me or Matthew for what happened, and not even him being hit by a bus can change her mind.
‘Here, drink this.’ Nick sits down beside me, handing me a glass of green gloop.
