“No. I’m not going to see Derek. I don’t even know if he’ll be in Egypt.” Which, now that she reminds me, I should check on. Because running into him is the last thing I want.
“Of course he’ll be there.” She makes a scoffing noise. “It’s dig season.” How can her voice be artic and boiling mad at the same time?
“Probably. But he won’t be in Amarna. And I have no intention of searching him out.”
Bella wanders into the room, pulling a face, having heard my mother’s voice.
“Do you think I’m stupid? You always favoured him. Even when he left you without a backward glance. And you’re still chasing after him, begging for his approval like a desperate puppy.” I should be used to this by now. My mother is bitter and angry. I get it. What I don’t get is why she continues to take it out on me.
“Mum …”
“No. Don’t bother making excuses. I suppose I’ll see you on Christmas Eve. Give my regards to your”—there’s a distinct pause, as though she’s debating what term to use—“father.”
And the line goes dead.
“Huh. I think that might actually be a record,” Bella says, checking her phone. “By my reckoning, it only took her twenty seconds to go from Glinda the Good Witch to the Wicked Witch of the West that time.”
I lean over, pick up a throw pillow from the sofa beside me, press it to my face and scream. Long and loud.
Is it any wonder the idea of attaching myself to someone isn’t appealing? Her relationship with my father turned my mother into an angry, bitter, spiteful person who can’t even find it in herself to love her children. That is not the person I want to be. Ever.
I can only imagine what she’d say if I told her I had feelings for my professor. Unwelcome as they may be. She’d pitch a fit you could hear all the way to Egypt. And Prague. Because she’s not above sending my father poison pen emails and texts. Not that he doesn’t deserve them.
By the time I drop the pillow, there’s a litre of cookie dough ice cream in front of me with two spoons speared into the top.
“Do you need the talk?” Bella asks. She’s been through this scenario with me so many times she has a script all worked out.
Surprisingly, Mum’s familiar little tantrum hasn’t hurt the way they have in the past. I don’t know if moving out of the house has given me much-needed distance or if I’m growing a thicker skin, but I find her words haven’t sliced at my heart the way they used to.
“Actually. I don’t. I’m good. Although I won’t say no to the ice cream.”
We sit side by side on the couch, feet stretched out on the coffee table in front of us and dig in.
“Do you think that’s why you got so angry with Ethan after your trip to Bangalay?” Bella asks. Which might seem completely out of the blue, but she knows me—and my pain points—well.
I spent my entire childhood tiptoeing through a narcissistic minefield. Expecting to get my leg—or head—blown off any minute. And the way Ethan reacted in Bangalay took me right back there.
“Probably. I guess he hit a raw nerve.”
“You haven’t talked about him since the night you came back.”
“There’s nothing to say, really. We’re colleagues. That’s it.”
“Is it?”
“I’m not angry at him anymore. I get it. I know it can’t have been easy for him, seeing me there with his family. When his wife had been part of it for so long …”
“But?”
“But understanding it doesn’t mean I want to put myself in harm’s way. That’s something he needs to work through himself. I can’t be collateral damage in someone else’s life again. Not to mention, I can’t have been any clearer. No matter how gorgeous and clever and all-round almost perfect he is, I’m not going there. I have a career to think about. I won’t let anyone get in the way of that.”
Bella sighs.
“Why do the ones we want always have to be so tortured?”
Bella has her own painful romantic past, which she claims to be over. Her constant dating of losers gives lie to that denial.
I suck another spoonful of ice cream down.
