Chapter Twenty-Seven

There was so much yelling coming from the kitchen, it was a wonder anyone even noticed when we crept inside, Joe in front, me close behind but not quite touching. Mum was shouting at Gregory, Gregory was shouting at Dad and Dad was stoically brewing a pot of coffee while wearing a pointy cardboard hat that said ‘Happy Birthday'. Charlotte sat with her back to the fuss, casually flipping through a limited edition version of the latest Victoria Aveyard in a pair of oversized men's paisley pyjamas, oblivious to the fuss.

At the same moment we came through the back door, William came in from the hallway, looking every bit as confused as I felt.

‘It's simply abhorrent behaviour!' Gregory shouted, his very loud pink patterned shirt torn at the collar. ‘How could you do it?'

‘You're the one who was sneaking around in the middle of the night,' Dad replied. ‘Texting unapproved counter offers to my authors.'

‘My author!' Gregory's eyes bulged out of his head. ‘Genevieve is my author!'

‘Was your author,' Dad corrected. ‘If you'd signed them to a decent deal in the first place, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Don't blame me for your lack of foresight and bad business.'

‘You're a savage!' Gregory wailed, slamming his hand down on the kitchen counter and trying to hide his wince when he clearly hurt himself.

‘Please lower your voice,' Mum moaned with one palm pressed to her forehead. ‘We're all hungover, Gregory. Do we really need to do this right this very second?'

‘Morning, Este!' Charlotte piped up from across the room. ‘Sleep well?'

‘Maybe we should come back later,' I suggested, Joe nodding beside me as his father continued ranting.

‘What exactly is happening?' William asked, appearing out the blue to block our path before we could leave. ‘Besides a re-enactment of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City season four finale?'

Charlotte twisted around in her chair, resting her chin on the overstuffed cushion. ‘Gregory tried to counter Dad's offer to Genevieve Salinger but they turned it down, and Dad has apparently had a message from Nelson Allen's agent, asking if he'd be open to pitching for Nelson's next book, taking him away from Herringbone and over to MullinsParker. They tried to fight again for a minute but it was all a bit sad so they stopped and started bitching at each other instead.'

‘I always miss all the fun,' William sighed.

‘Happy birthday me!' Dad picked up a small plastic noise maker and blew into it, the long strip of colour paper streaming out with a dull horn sound that couldn't quite manage to drown out the din of the room.

‘Perhaps it's time the two of you made a move,' Mum said, glaring at Joe who stood up straight at the side of me. ‘You don't want to get stuck in the Sunday afternoon traffic on the M1.'

But Gregory was still laser focused on my dad, who was busy spooning brown sugar into his new ‘Birthday Boy' mug. ‘I'm not going anywhere until he apologises and rescinds his offers to my authors.'

‘Better set old Greggers a place for Christmas dinner because Dad's never going to go for that,' William said. ‘You sticking around as well, Joe? If I put the extra leaf in the table, we'll have plenty of room.'

‘We really should get going,' Joe replied, an embarrassed smile on his gorgeous face. ‘Thank you so much for having us, Mrs Taylor.'

‘Don't thank her!'

His dad was outraged, so upset that his entire head had turned the same colour as a plum. He looked to be seconds away from going full Violet Beauregarde in the middle of the kitchen. ‘Don't thank any of them! They've already tried to drag you into their schemes, son, all this Este Cox bollocks? Can even one of you manage to tell the truth for one second?'

‘I don't think Dad lied about anything—' William offered but Gregory cut him off before he could finish.

‘Enough out of you!' he exclaimed. ‘I want to know what's going on with little missus mouse over there, forcing you into saying you're Este Cox when she's the smut-peddler. I can tell when there's something rotten in the state of Denmark.'

‘This isn't Denmark, it's Derbyshire,' Charlotte replied, kicking her legs back over the arm of the chair.

‘And that brat—'

‘Enough!'

Dad slammed his mug down so hard the handle snapped right off. ‘Say whatever you like to me but you do not speak to my daughters that way—'

‘Fine to talk to me like that though,' William said quietly with a thumbs up.

‘—and I think you've overstayed your welcome. Time for the two of you to leave.'

‘The two of you?' I repeated. ‘What did Joe do?'

‘Don't, it's OK,' Joe replied with a quick squeeze of my arm before turning to his father. ‘Dad, go and get your bag, I'll meet you at the car in five minutes.'

‘Five minutes longer than I want to spend in this shithole,' Gregory muttered, stomping down the hallway. ‘Be outside in two or I'll leave without you.'

‘Be right back,' Joe said to me, slipping out the back door.

‘I'll help,' I offered but, before I could follow, my mum stepped in front of me and closed the door behind him. ‘Or, I could stay here'

‘Once our guests have gone, I think we need to have a conversation, don't you?' she said, her glasses slipping down her nose as she glared in my direction.

‘What happened to CJ,' I asked brightly, closely examining my fingernails. ‘Did he not stay over?'

‘Last spotted mooching down the road to the pub in the rain with his arse hanging out,' William replied.

‘Don't change the subject,' Mum said loudly, using her sternest, most chiding tone. ‘The pair of you have got plenty of explaining to do yourselves before you start raising questions about other people.'

‘Do you want to do it straight to camera?' Charlotte asked, peeping over the back of the chair again, phone in hand. ‘Or are you feeling a notes app statement? It's a little retro but it could work if you let me draft it. You're not that great at spontaneous chat.'

‘Thanks but I don't think I need your help writing anything,' I replied with narrowed eyes. ‘Aren't you the one who said Butterflies was your favourite book of all time?'

‘No,' she said, staring right back.

‘Oh right, that was someone else,' I nodded. ‘Never mind.'

The angry sound of Gregory's bag scraping against the walls and smashing into each and every step on his way downstairs filled the whole house.

‘You better have the engine running, Joseph!' he bellowed. ‘Get me out of this hellhole backwater ditch.'

‘The average house price in Harford is seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds,' William said, stepping into the hall and holding the front door open for our guest. ‘What drugs are you on and can I have some?'

Dad was still smiling a victor's smile but it was frozen in place, tight and uncomfortable, and he hadn't noticed the coffee trickling out from his cracked mug, spilling all over the kitchen counter. I grabbed a tea towel to mop it up, placing the broken mug carefully in the sink. I was picking up the handle to drop it in the bin when Joe passed by the window, heading down the side of the house.

He wasn't coming back inside.

With the sharp curve of ceramic still in my hand, I raced through the kitchen and hall and out of the front door, where he was dumping his leather holdall into the boot.

Gregory marched over to join him, tossing his bag in the back beside his son's, toppling Walter the sad walrus squishmallow who had been in there ever since the fete.

‘I left my number on the bedside table,' Joe said quietly. ‘Call me later?'

My hand tightened around the mug handle, barely registering the sharp slice into my palm as I held myself back from him. But even without physical contact, the connection between us was as clear as day and on display for all to see.

‘Get your son away from my daughter!' Dad shouted from the doorstep, storming across the gravel in his dressing gown, slippers and pointy birthday hat. ‘Sophie, get back inside, I don't want you anywhere near him.'

‘As if my son would go near your daughter.' Gregory howled with laughter and I squeezed the broken handle even tighter. ‘Look at him, look at her. She should be so lucky.'

‘In my defence, I'm not a morning person,' I said, trying to bite some colour into my lips. ‘No one's a ten out of ten first thing.'

‘All right, steady on,' William warned as annoyance flickered across Joe's face. ‘Try to keep your weird little feud between the two of you and leave the kids out of it.'

Gregory gave a gleeful little giggle. ‘It's one thing to think you can steal my authors but if that's the only bait you've got to try and trap my son, you'll have to do better.'

‘Dad!' Joe exclaimed, one hand on the boot. ‘Shut up and get in the car. Sophie, Hugh, I am so sorry.'

‘He's going to feel very silly in a minute,' I whispered to William, waiting for Joe to tell his father just how wrong he was.

‘Don't worry, darling, he wouldn't go near a girl like you on your best day,' Gregory declared with a condescending leer. ‘Even if he weren't already spoken for.'

The boot of the car slammed shut to punctuate his sentence and Joe stared back at me, his face suddenly frozen.

‘Dad, shut up and get in the car,' he ordered. ‘Sophie, I'll speak to you later.'

‘What do you mean, spoken for?' I asked, looking to his father for an answer.

‘Ignore him,' Joe pleaded. ‘He's talking shit.'

‘Has he got a girlfriend?'

My voice sounded very far away but at least I managed to get the words out.

‘He's got a wife.'

Gregory corrected my sentence in verbal red pen, bleeding every ounce of emphasis out of the word. ‘Real stunner she is as well. Show them a photo, Joseph, the one on the beach in Hawaii. Canadian, isn't that right? She's an editor at—'

‘At Knoll in New York,' I finished Gregory's sentence for him and, from the look on Joe's face, I knew I was right. ‘I hear she's very talented.'

His dad squeezed his shoulders together as though talent was neither here nor there and I squeezed my hands to stop myself from crying. Behind me, I heard William suck the air in through his teeth.

‘Soph, your hand.'

Tearing my eyes away from Joe's guilty expression, I held out both my hands, no idea what William was talking about. My right hand was slick with blood, bright red with a deep scarlet gash in the centre. The broken handle of Dad's mug slipped through my fingers and onto the floor, its sharp edge gleaming.

‘I'll get a towel,' Dad said, immediately switching into parent mode.

Gregory retched into his hand and bolted for the passenger seat. ‘I can't stand the sight of blood. Joseph, let's get going before I chuck.'

William wrapped a protective arm around my shoulder. ‘We need to get you inside. You can't bleed out in the front garden, what will the neighbours say?'

But I didn't budge and neither did Joe.

‘Are you married?' I asked him.

He looked away and I knew I had my answer. My brother, his father, the house, the car, everything and everyone else vanished, leaving only the two of us.

‘You said no secrets.' I clenched my hands into fists, ignoring the rusty splatters on the gravel. ‘You said I could trust you.'

‘No. I didn't,' he replied sadly, finding his voice at last. ‘I said I'd made mistakes and that I would fix them.'

‘Forgetting you're married is quite a big mistake, pal.' William steered me away from the car and back towards the house. ‘I think it's about time for you to fuck off now, Joseph, don't you?'

I put one foot in front of the other, moving so slowly, waiting for the sound of his voice calling my name, begging me to stop and let him explain everything. Instead, I heard a car door slam shut and the growl of the Range Rover's engine, tyre tracks moving too quickly over gravel. And then, he was gone.

‘Look at the state of you,' Mum muttered when we reappeared in the kitchen, irritated and anxious at the same time, a highly specific maternal mix. ‘Get your hand under the tap so I can see how bad it is.'

‘It's fine,' I replied, wrapping my hand in the wad of paper towel my dad was already holding out to me. ‘It's not as bad as it looks.'

Joe was married. Joe was gone.

‘What if you need stitches?' she carried on, still running the hot water. ‘That'll be a nice end to the birthday weekend, twenty-four hours in AE.'

‘It's fine,' I said again, louder this time. Much louder. Slowly, she turned off the tap and started banging around in the cupboards, her irritation upgrading to agitation.

‘A cup of tea then,' she suggested. ‘We'll sit down and have a cup of tea and you can tell us what the bloody hell has been going on. Where the hell is my sodding lapsang?'

‘Now might not be the best time,' William said, shooting Mum a meaningful look as Charlotte peered over the back of the chair again, uncertainty on her face. She knew she'd missed something but wasn't sure what.

Joe was married. Joe was gone.

‘My daughter.'

We all turned to look at Dad, standing with his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown, shaking his head at me, and I held my breath, preparing for whatever came next.

‘An international bestseller,' he said with a smile. ‘Talk about happy birthday me.'

More confused and relieved than I had ever been in my life, I exhaled heavily and felt a fresh set of tears prickling at my eyes. Then, without another word, Mum walked out of the kitchen and the tears started to fall.

‘Pandora?' Dad called.

She didn't reply and I heard her office door shut firmly and loudly. Pressing the paper towel against the cut on my hand, smarting at the sting.

‘Would you drive me to the station?' I asked William.

He looked over at Dad for permission and grimaced.

‘I'll drive you home,' he offered. ‘Can't have you getting on the train in this state.'

‘I'll go and get your stuff,' Charlotte said, shuffling out of the chair and leaving her book on the table. ‘You probably shouldn't be using that manky hand.'

‘You're just trying to get rid of me faster,' I said, leaning against my brother.

‘And I get to go through your stuff again without you realising,' she replied as she let herself out the back door.

‘Well, it's officially a birthday for the books,' Dad said with a sigh, sliding his hat over to a more rakish angle. ‘Maybe you can use some of it in your next bestseller.'

‘Maybe,' I said as he gave me a nod. ‘I'm under contract, I've got to write about something.'

And I didn't know how I was ever going to write another love story ever again.