He’s such a little weirdo.
Once King is tired enough to start rolling around on the grass with his tongue lolling out a few inches further than normal, I call him back. King doesn’t make me chase him and trots over to me so I can put his lead back on. I had to get him a new lead when he hid his old one. I still haven’t managed to find it even two months later. I think there’s a good chance he buried it in our back garden, but I don’t yet have the evidence to convict.
Mum still isn’t home when I get back to the house. Not that I necessarily expected her to be.
I plod into the kitchen to fill up King’s water bowl, setting it down near the fridge for him. King skates his nails over the kitchen floor tiles and licks messily at the water in the bowl.
Our kitchen is large and mostly done up in black. Black floor, black appliances, black countertops. It all looks very modern, which is my mum’s preferred taste of the month. She’s had the kitchen redone at least five times in the last six years. I don’t know why. It’s not like she uses the kitchen all that much. I cook more than she does, and that’s still not a lot.
Before everything went down with Dad, we had a live-in cook, Mrs Oliver, and a part-time cleaner, Diane. Mum got rid of Mrs Oliver because the older woman had the audacity to stop buying alcohol with the rest of the groceries. Diane only stayed for another year. I was the one who told her to stop coming after she caught Mum in a bad mood and got abuse hurled her way. It felt safer just to do what needed to be done myself and not risk any trouble from other people.
It was hell for a long time.
I’d hoped that things at home would get better eventually. They didn’t, and they haven’t, and I’ve come to accept this is justit. This is how things are and might always be.
I make myself some Nutella on toast for breakfast and eat it while sitting at the kitchen island, with my phone down beside my plate to read a book on the Kindle app, using a lightly Nutella-smeared finger to swipe at the screen.
I’m just thinking about going upstairs to get showered and dressed when my phone starts to buzz on the granite countertop.
I blink tiredly at the name that comes up on the screen.
Damon North.
I think about not answering the stupid thing but only for a second. There’s no way I could ever ignore a call from him.
Damon is my closest friend and a fellow FISA agent. He’s the only other agent I trust implicitly to have my back.
I have a good idea of why he’s calling. Damon isn’t much of a talker. Nine times out of ten, he’d rather text than speak over the phone. Pretty much the only time he makes an exception is when he’s calling to tell me my mum has been arrested again.
Over the past few years, she’s been arrested a handful of times for indecent behaviour and other alcohol-related problems.
Damon has a contact on the police force, a young officer by the name of Yasmeen Mirza. When Mum gets taken in, Yasmeen will let Mum sleep it off in a cell and call Damon to let him know she’s there. In turn, he lets me know where she is. So far, she’s managed to avoid any serious offences or penalties. I can’t help but think Damon is part of the reason for that as well.
I used to get more embarrassed about it. What my mum behaved like as well as the undeniably special treatment Damon pulled strings to get for us. But now I’m just grateful. I feel like the older I get, the less I care about how I’m perceived by strangers, which is a relief, to be honest. I was starting to develop complexes and anxiety disorders and all that fun stuff.
I pick up the phone and answer it, pressing the phone to my ear.
“Is she okay?” I don’t bother with politeness. Damon and I are far past that. “How much trouble is she in?”
Damon has a low, gravelly voice and a thick Danger City accent, both of which cause him to sound perpetually harsh no matter what it is he’s saying. He could wish someone a “happy birthday” and it would still sound like a mild threat to their personal safety.
“She’s fine,” he tells me. “Grumpy and hungover but fine. She didn’t really get arrested this time. She just passed out in a gutter, and they brought her in so she could sleep it off somewhere safe.”
As much as it pains me, that is the best-case scenario. I don’t want to have to wrangle her into going to court again. I only had to do that once, and it was a nightmare. We argued over everything from what shoes she should wear to the kind of transport we should take. At the time, she was banned from driving, hence the reason why we were going to court.
I wanted to just bus it to the courthouse, but Mum hates all forms of public transport. She says they’re filthy, which is hilarious coming from a person who habitually ends up falling down drunk in the street or in strangers’ homes. I didn’t point that out at the time. It would have been like trying to argue with a spoilt five-year-old.
“Is she ready for me to go and get her?” I ask, rubbing at my left temple. A headache is starting to form there, past experience having taught me the next hour or so isn’t going to be pleasant.
“You don’t need to,” Damon says, pretending to sound flippant about it so I won’t argue. “I’m at the police station now, picking her up. Borrowed Rex’s car. I’ll bring her round.”
Guilt prickles at my conscience.
Damon and I both recently returned from a month-long mission together. This week is supposed to be our downtime between assignments, and I know Damon was looking forward to spending most of it with his boyfriend, Rex.
Rex is also my paternal cousin. He recently joined FISA’s medical team after finishing his initial five-year medical degree at Danger City University. Rex and I were estranged for a long time due to the friction between our fathers. But in recent years, we’ve become quite close. He’s one of the few people I trust to look after King when I’m away on missions.
I’m certain the news of my mother’s arrest dragged Damon away from enjoying his rare burst of freedom. It pains me to have done that to him when he gets so little proper time off to be with Rex.
