Emily opens her own bedroom door. “Ruth’s not here,” she says. She checks the bathroom. It’s empty, too.
Jayne is frozen in the doorway of her bedroom, transfixed by the sight of her belongings strewn everywhere.
She remembers: the gun. It disappeared. The police cannot know.
And where is Ruth?
Emily is behind her. “Is your phone there?”
“I’ll look,” Jayne says. “Give me a minute.”
She grabs a top from the floor to cover herself up and shuts her bedroom door because she instinctually feels that she should hide the mess, and whatever it might be evidence of, from Emily.
A little more trickles back to her: the feeling of Ruth’s warmth in the bed, the comfort Jayne was seeking. She fights the urge to disassociate, again. Her brain wants her to.
The truth is, her gun is gone and she doesn’t know what she might have done, and she’s not sure what Ruth, dead drunk last night and surely still drunk this morning, might have done either.
“I’m sorry!” Imogen shouts. “Please, stop. I’ll eat, I’ll eat.”
The egg she puked up has fallen from her hand onto the bedcovers. She picks it up, retches again but puts it in her mouth anyway and chews. Tears spill from her eyes.
He looks grotesque. A vile smile spreads beneath a sticky layer of egg. He smeared it all over his mouth and his chin in circular motions, bits have gone up his nose. The yolk is bright yellow. It glues the rubbery globs of white to his skin.
She chews and chews the piece of egg and knows she can’t swallow it. It seems to have expanded in her mouth. The consistency is disgusting. Rubber. She reaches for her tea and takes a gulp. The egg won’t go down. She retches again. It feels as if every muscle between her tongue and her tummy wants to expel the egg. She takes another gulp of tea, praying this time it’ll help. It’s lukewarm, over-sugared and over-milked, almost as disgusting as the egg. But she forces herself to swallow, and, thankfully, the egg goes down with it.
She pants in the aftermath. She wants to puke it back up.
“There,” he says. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?” There’s even a bit of egg stuck on his eyebrow.
Imogen shakes her head. She’s never felt so afraid. “No,” she says. “Thank you.”
Imogen’s words are polite, and she worked valiantly, if a little melodramatically, to swallow the egg I made her, but her eyes, bright with unshed tears, betray her true feelings, as does a muscle that’s twitching in her jaw.
She’s appalled by what I’ve done and quite rightly.
I’ve smashed the egg on my own face, pasted it messily across my mouth like whore’s lipstick. Just the way my father used to if I didn’t eat everything up.
I’m very embarrassed. It’s a terrible lapse. I don’t know what came over me. I’m better than this.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. She’s pushed herself right back into the pillows behind her, putting as much distance as possible between us. “What must you think of me?”
She only stares at me in response. Why won’t she relax? I’m apologizing!
“I’m sorry,” I repeat. “I really am. It was just a joke, but a really bad one. I haven’t had much practice at being a parent.”
“You’re not my parent.”
And it’s not time to tell her yet because I want the results of that test first. “What I mean is, being in loco parentis.”
She frowns.
“Translation: standing in for a parent.”
“I want to go home.”
She looks desolate. She doesn’t want to be with me. This is the last thing I wanted.
“But your mum’s not back until tonight.” Or ever.
