“Alright,” I say, knowing he won’t accept any of my attempts to relieve him of taxi duty. “I’ll have a cup of tea and your fave biccies waiting here for you.”
Damon makes an interested humming sound.
“Dark chocolate digestives?” he asks.
A smile pricks at the corners of my mouth.
“Supermarket’s own brand, I promise.”
“They’re the only good ones,” he defends.
I smile a little wider, a little more genuinely.
“They’re digestives, D; they all taste exactly the same.”
Damon sucks in a dramatic breath.
“Blasphemy!”
I let out a short laugh, and Damon’s own low laughter rumbles down the phone at me. Then with a quick “see you soon,” we hang up.
I put my phone down on the countertop with a slight clatter and run both of my hands through my untameable mop of hair. I need to get it cut. Or just shear a few inches off myself and deal with a terrible haircut for a while.
King makes a sniffle-bark sound from down on the ground. I look over the side of the counter at him. He tilts his head at me as if asking a question.
I blow out a long breath.
“Mum’s on her way home,” I tell him. “Prepare yourself, my liege, for the usual carnage.”
King springs up and darts around in a circle a few times. I like to think it’s a show of solidarity.
I push myself off the kitchen stool and go upstairs to quickly shower and change.
After my shower, I drag out some clean clothes, a pair of well-worn jeans, and a dark-blue T-shirt. It’s a T-shirt Rex bought me for my birthday last year, and it has the outline of a roaring lion printed on it in glitter.
Damon arrives with my mum just as I’m putting on the silver pendant necklace she gave to me when I turned eighteen. The pendant has the impression of a snowdrop moulded into it and once belonged to my great-great-grandmother. It has been passed down to every generation since.
I like to wear it when I’m nervous or sad about Mum because it reminds me of the good memories I have of her, and that’s comforting. It helps me to remember there’s still the woman who loves me underneath all the crap.
I go out onto the landing in time to see Mum already coming up towards me. Damon is standing down at the bottom of the stairs, watching Mum warily, prepared to come running if she stumbles and falls.
She looks awful. Her makeup has gone very racoonlike, and her tight black dress and tights have rips as well as some stuff I don’t want to guess the origin of splattered on them. Her feet are sans the heels she left the house in. God knows where they are now.
I lope down a few steps to meet Mum in the middle of the wide staircase. She takes one look at me and her face creases into obstinate defensiveness. I can already feel a stupid argument coming on if I don’t nip it in the bud.
Mum’s lips are devoid of the red lipstick she was wearing yesterday. They look dry and cracked.
Flickering my eyes over her once more, I barely contain a wince. She seems to get more ragged every time I see her.
Mum is skinny because she barely eats and spends most nights throwing up whatever she did manage to consume that day along with all the alcohol.
I was a relatively chunky kid, a fact my mother liked to comment on remorselessly throughout my early adolescence.
Around the age of fifteen, my daily runs, along with the natural course of puberty, resulted in a lot of the fat on my body shifting into muscle. My training with FISA has only furthered this physical shift, noticeably bulking me up.
Other than our obvious size difference, Mum and I look a lot alike. We’re both very tall and possess the same black hair, pale complexions, and light-blue eyes. Our faces also share features, which are similarly sharp and finely chiselled.
On the inside, I hope we’renothingalike.
