Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was almost nine o'clock when I heard the doorbell go.

‘Who is it?' Charlotte asked, lying on her belly on my living room floor.

‘I don't know, I'm not psychic.'

‘You don't have a Ring camera?' she scoffed without looking away from the TV. ‘Caveman.'

There was no need to tell her I did but I'd forgotten to charge it before I left to meet Malcolm on Thursday morning and next-door's cat had been having the time of its life, chasing foxes around all weekend long and draining the battery. She was sure to find that even more mortifying than the idea of my primitive, Ring-less existence.

She rolled over with a steely look on her pretty face.

‘Do you want me to get it? In case it's him?'

‘It's OK, I'll get it,' I said, closing my laptop and heaving myself off the sofa. Other than the chicken nuggets and spontaneous sibling road trip, one good thing had come out of today. I'd never felt so inspired to finish my sequel. As soon as the worst possible version of events happened in real life, it was very clear what I wanted to happen in the book.

‘Bring him in and I'll defend you to the death,' she promised. ‘I know how to hide a body, I've listened to "No Body, No Crime" so many times. Where's the nearest lake?'

‘Actually very close,' I replied as I tiptoed along the hall to the front door trying not to give myself away to whoever was outside.

Four hours had passed since Joe had given up calling. Three since William set off back to Harford, leaving Charlotte with me supposedly for some unplanned sisterly bonding time but we all knew it was because they didn't want to leave me on my own, even if we wouldn't admit it, and because we wouldn't admit it, I couldn't say how much I appreciated it.

Frozen in front of the door, I shook myself down, cricking my neck from side to side like a boxer on his way into the ring. Joe could be right there, just a couple of feet in front of me, nothing but one relatively flimsy bit of wood between us. Would he bang on the door with the side of his fist if I didn't answer? Would he try, and probably succeed, to kick it down? He didn't strike me as a fall-on-the-floor-sobbing sort but I could imagine him standing in the doorway with fire in his eyes, demanding I hear him out. Yes, he was married to a really fit, super-talented Canadian editor from Knoll, but now he realised he'd never truly understood love until he met me. I would fight him at first, still burned by his lies, but he would sweep me off my feet and carry me upstairs, the bond between us too powerful to deny. Until he slipped on the loose bit of carpet at the top, fell backwards and we both broke our necks and died.

It would be all I deserved for even entertaining such a stupid theory.

‘Time to switch to writing fantasy,' I mumbled, wiping both hands over my tired face.

When the doorbell rang again, I realised I wanted it to be him more than I didn't. I didn't know what I would say but that was OK, I just needed to know he was real, that I hadn't imagined the whole thing. When I unlocked the door and opened it slowly, I felt my heart drop when I saw who was standing there.

‘Oh good, you are alive,' Mum said with an expectant look, waiting for me to move to the side and let her in. Out on the street, Dad waved from inside the car and I raised a slow hand to wave back.

‘If you've come for Charlotte,' I started, leading Mum into the living room. ‘Please take her because she's gone insane. Charlotte, where did you get a baseball bat?'

‘Brought it with me. It was part of my Harley Quinn Halloween costume the other year,' she explained, standing in the middle of the room bouncing a baseball bat against her palm. ‘What are you doing here?'

‘I came to talk to your sister.'

If our mother was fazed by her youngest daughter wielding a weapon, she didn't show it. ‘Why don't you go and wait in the car.'

‘Because I'm staying here with Sophie like I told you on the phone.'

‘If that's all right with Sophie, it's all right with me,' Mum replied, looking to me for my confirming nod. ‘Go and tell your dad. He's got a bag of foul neon orange snacks in there and I'd rather he didn't consume the whole thing himself, birthday weekend or not.'

Charlotte didn't even stop to put on her shoes. So much for defending me to the death. I needed someone to protect me from my mother way more than I needed someone to protect me against Joe.

‘Place looks nice,' Mum said as she settled down on the settee, testing the cushions with a splayed hand. ‘Is this new?'

‘New since you were last here.'

When was that? I couldn't remember. Neither she nor my father veered from the Harford to London route if they could help it these days. Mostly I went to them or we met in town and ever since I signed my book deal, my visits to them were less regular than usual. Still, I could count on one hand the number of times she'd been to my house.

‘I'll put the kettle on,' I said, starting for the kitchen when she cleared her throat to speak.

‘William called us on the drive back up and explained the entire situation.'

The tea would have to wait.

I scrunched my toes against my soft rug and leaned back against the rose-pink wall. I loved everything about my tiny house. After I'd moved out of mine and CJ's flat, I was determined to have everything exactly how I wanted it, from the decorating to the furnishings to the wattage of the bulbs in the light fixtures. It was strange to see Mum sitting on the sofa, sticking out like a sore thumb, when I slotted into place so cleanly at home. I made sense there but she didn't quite fit here, not quite comfortable.

‘He didn't go into an awful lot of detail about your relationship with Joseph Walsh but the fact there was a relationship to gloss over at all is bad enough.'

The wall wasn't enough to support me any more. I lowered myself down until I reached the back of my midnight blue velvet reading chair and perched.

‘I am pulling out all the stops to embarrass you this weekend, aren't I?' I said. ‘Terrible timing, I'm sorry.'

‘What are you talking about?' Mum replied, eyebrows almost meeting in the middle behind her glasses.

‘Messing around with a married man, who just so happens to be Gregory Brent's son, secretly authoring a book you referred to as "predictable, badly written, misogynistic nonsense", lying about who wrote the book then causing a bit of a scene at the party?'

‘If that's your idea of a bit of a scene, I'd hate to see what you consider a full-blown debacle.' She pulled on the silk scarf she had tied around her neck until both ends were exactly the same length. ‘I'd also like to think you know it would take a lot more than that to embarrass me.'

‘I saw Aunt Carole trying to seduce Joe in the spare bedroom when she thought he was Este Cox,' I blurted out and my mother blanched.

‘Yes,' she muttered. ‘That would do it.'

I slid over the edge of my chair and settled into its softness. I'd saved up for months to buy it, way before the book's success, my first grown-up, non-Ikea furniture purchase. Charlotte could have every Chanel handbag on the planet but I'd never part with this chair.

‘None of what happened at the party was your fault,' Mum went on. ‘And I shouldn't have walked out of the kitchen this morning, but it wasn't because of anything you did. I had simply reached my limit with the entire fiasco.'

‘Which brings us back to me messing around with a married man.'

‘Which brings us back to me being horrifically hungover, your father acting like a complete fool, not to mention inviting way more people than he was meant to and ruining my favourite pink blazer, Gregory Brent merely existing and his monstrous son stringing my daughter along, when very clearly he is the one who should be strung up, preferably by a part of his anatomy he should never be allowed to use again.'

The fervour in her voice matched the fury in her eyes and my jaw dropped.

‘You're not upset with me?' I asked, pulling a cushion out from behind me and hugging it close to my belly.

Both of her eyebrows eased up her forehead and she gave me The Look.

‘Not about that, but I would like to understand why you felt it necessary to lie to us for so long.'

‘Technically, I didn't lie, I just didn't tell you,' I corrected. ‘Joe lied and maybe I backed him up but technically—'

The Look intensified by one degree and I shut my mouth immediately.

‘Sophie, you wrote a book, you submitted it to Mal, you used William as your agent, and at no point in that process did you think it might be worth mentioning it to either of your parents? It's quite hard not to feel a bit hurt.'

‘Can you really blame me?' I said when she stood and crossed the room to my bookshelves where one single copy of Butterflies lay on its side, spine in, hiding on top of my most beloved paperbacks.

‘Who else should I blame?' she asked, picking up the book and looking at it as though she was seeing it for the first time. ‘William didn't tell you to keep it a secret, I very much doubt Malcolm did. As far as I can tell, it was your decision.'

Curling my legs up underneath me, I squeezed the cushion closer while she read the back cover copy, her finger following each line down, one at a time.

‘When I first sent it in to Mal, I didn't want to say anything in case he said it was rubbish,' I began. ‘I thought about telling you after MullinsParker acquired it, but it still felt too weird. And don't take this the wrong way but I didn't want the added pressure, people would've looked at it differently if they knew Este Cox was yours and Dad's daughter.'

‘Because you're embarrassed by us.'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

‘Charlotte's been very open about letting us know how out of touch we are,' she went on with a rueful smile. ‘I'm very sorry that stopped you from sharing this with us.'

‘I'm not embarrassed by you, you're embarrassed by me,' I said, sitting up. ‘You hate romance novels, Dad has never, ever worked on one in his whole career. You know I've always wanted to write and it was really hard to know my parents were looking down on my book when I'd worked so hard on it and don't say you're not because you were very, very honest about your thoughts. At least until you thought Joe was the author.'

A rare blush coloured my mother's cheeks and she returned to the sofa, still holding my book. ‘I said some very unkind things about Butterflies. The fact my opinion changed had nothing to do with its supposed author and everything to do with my having read it.'

‘Nothing to do with the author at all?' I prodded.

‘Well.' She pursed her lips to temper her smile and ran her hand over the soft-touch cover. ‘You can't deny you would be impressed too if you thought a straight man had written a woman-centric romance this good.'

It was the biggest compliment she had ever given me and it wasn't even direct.

‘Your father hasn't published a romance novel because, to the best of my knowledge, a romance novel has never crossed his desk. I disregarded it because, and let me be brutally honest, I am a terrible literary snob.'

A laugh erupted out of me and I tried to capture it in my hand but Mum looked perfectly at peace with the fact.

‘Very happy to admit it,' she said. ‘Just because a bunch of old industry fogeys value my opinion doesn't mean it's the only valid one. And it's still only that, an opinion. It breaks my heart to think you didn't share this incredible achievement with me and your dad because I sit in my ivory castle handing out irrelevant pats on the head and he works on books by people who imagine themselves in the body of a llama.'

It was good to hear her say it and even better to see her holding my book without having to worry she was about to throw it into a bonfire, but the air between us wasn't quite cleared. A very loud imaginary voice told me to cut my losses while I was ahead but if I'd learned nothing else today it was that secrets festered and always came out to bite you in the arse in the end.

‘The other night, when you were talking to Jericka and Aunt Carole in the kitchen,' I said. ‘I was outside and I heard you saying how disappointed you were that I'd gone into teaching rather than publishing.'

‘Oh, Sophie, no.'

Mum's face fell, the hard-earned smile I'd already saved to my memory box vanishing in an instant. She was up on her feet and beside me on my chair before I'd even had time to blink away the tears that threatened as soon as I spoke.

‘You must think I'm an absolute monster,' she said, combing her fingers through my hair, something she hadn't done since I was a child. ‘That's not what I meant at all. I'm not disappointed because you're a teacher but I have worried about you making that choice, only because I suspected that your heart lay elsewhere. Sometimes things come out wrong after a long day, especially when talking to your Aunt Carole. Obviously if I'd known you were listening—'

‘It's all right,' I told her, even though it wasn't. ‘You get used it. Middle child stuff.'

‘But you're not my middle child,' Mum corrected. ‘You're my eldest daughter. William got away with blue murder by being the first and Charlotte has been spoiled to death, and we're all suffering for it now. But you had the weight of the world on you from the very beginning. Trying to live up to everybody's expectations, suffering all the lessons we learned with William, trying to win your big brother's approval, and just when you started to come into your own, along comes your little sister. But you always handled everything with such grace.'

‘Except for when I punched CJ in the face,' I suggested.

‘I missed that so we'll pretend it didn't happen,' she replied. ‘Although I did hear from your father that it was a decent swing. Good follow-through, were his precise words, I think.'

Squeezed onto the chair next to me, she placed my book on top of my cushion and smoothed one hand over the cover.

‘I should've had more confidence that you would find your way to it in your own time,' she said, pulling my head down onto her shoulder. ‘You have excelled in everything you've ever done and I am so proud of you. So is your dad and your brother and so is your new little shadow.'

She nodded out the window to where Dad and Charlotte were still digging into a giant bag of Doritos and singing along to something on the stereo.

‘Not quite managing to excel in my love life,' I said when she went back to the sofa and started rummaging around in her handbag. ‘I can't believe I was so stupid.'

‘I can,' she replied without looking up. ‘Sorry, that came out wrong. Do you know your father proposed to me the same day we met?'

‘Yes but that was a million years ago,' I said. ‘You've been together forever.'

‘We have now but we hadn't then.' She pulled a Sharpie out of her bag and came back to the chair. ‘We were fools for each other from the very first day we met. Sometimes it happens that quickly and you don't get to control it,' Mum said, tapping the cover of my book. ‘I'd have thought you knew that.'

‘Dad wasn't married though,' I reminded her. ‘And spoiler alert for book two, neither is Eric.'

‘He wasn't married but your father wasn't entirely single either. Scandalous, I know, but here we all are today, no regrets. The course of true love never did run smooth.'

‘Yes but also, one must not live one's life through men but must be complete of oneself as a woman of substance,' I quoted wisely.

‘Very good, I like that,' Mum said, impressed. ‘Austen or Bront??'

‘Fielding,' I replied. ‘Bridget Jones's Diary.'

There was no restraining her grin this time.

‘That expensive education was worth every penny,' she commented with a loving nudge. ‘And regardless as to how you feel right now, there is no shame in falling fast and falling hard. Joseph is very charming and if I didn't know what I know now, I would've readily believed he felt the same way you evidently feel about him.'

‘Plus he's really fit,' I sighed, giving the tall, dark haired illustration of Eric on my cover the filthiest look I could muster.

‘It does help sell the package. More intelligent women than you or I have been taken in by a pretty face and a pair of strong arms. And a very nice backside. And—'

‘All right, you've made the point. Hot, charming, not my fault.'

‘Even if it feels like it is.'

She took my hand, turned it over and placed the Sharpie in my bandaged palm.

‘What's this?' I asked as she pulled off the lid. ‘I've got the message, you don't need to write a warning on the back of my hands, I'm not going to call him.'

‘No, you're going to sign my book.' She opened Butterflies to the title page and drew a thick black line through the name ‘Este Cox'. ‘After that, I'm going to get your dad and your sister and we're going to order a pizza and you're going to tell us the whole story, starting from when you very first had the idea to where we are now and you're not going to leave out a single word. Deal?'

‘We both know I will do anything for pizza.'

I scrawled my signature under the crossed-out name and stared at the page.

‘What's wrong?' Mum asked. ‘Please tell me you didn't spell my name wrong.'

‘This is the first book I've signed,' I said, slightly stunned.

‘The very first signed first edition of Butterflies,' she said with the greatest reverence. ‘If you add the date, this should see me and your dad through our retirement. And for the record, I never said you shouldn't call him. There could be more to the story than you know.'

‘He's going on the DNF pile,' I told her, shaking all thoughts of Joe Walsh out of my head. ‘I can live without his unnecessary exposition. He isn't a morally grey hero, he's an arse.'

She pulled me into a hug and, over her shoulder, I saw my phone light up on the arm of the chair. Same number, calling again. But this time when the screen faded back to black and my heart sank, there was a little lifeboat there to catch it before it hit rock bottom, and I smiled against the tears that fell anyway.

‘That cut needs some antiseptic, I think it's deeper than it looks.' She broke the hug and took my injured hand in hers, softening her grasp when she saw my tears. ‘But it'll heal,' she promised, wiping them away one at a time. ‘Given time.'

‘I know,' I said, blinking my eyes dry. ‘And I've got all the time in the world.'