‘Just get in.’
Bess got into the taxi, leaned her head on her lodger’s shoulder on the way home, and then stumbled out of the vehicle at the other end.
‘Gio!’ Bess hollered when she saw him coming towards them. ‘You’re getting good on those crutches. Here, let me have a go.’ She tried to stand up straight.
He ignored her request.
‘What are you doing here? Are you here to take me out to dinner? Because I’d go, you know. On a date.’
He hesitated but only briefly. ‘Not tonight, Bess.’ His kind smile was nowhere to be seen. ‘I’m here to bail my mother and by the looks of things, you, out of a situation.’ Angry puffs of air that came with every word he uttered had her giggling.
‘Uh-oh… Marianne, I think we’re in trouble!’
Gio took out his wallet and sorted payment for the driver. All Bess could hear was Marianne trying to get her son’s attention as she attempted to get out of the back of the taxi.
‘You might need to help her,’ Bess laughed. ‘She hurt herself when she fell over.’
Gio shoved his wallet deep into his coat pocket – it took some skill doing that on crutches; Bess was impressed.
‘I’m done helping her,’ he said.
‘He’s very angry,’ said Bess in what she thought might be awhisper but judging by Gio’s reaction was loud and clear. ‘Marianne, your son is maaaaaaaaaaad!’ She dragged out the last word on her lips before turning to stagger up the path.
She spun around when she heard Marianne, who had managed to get out of the taxi by now, calling after him, her son’s name taken away on the cold wind. She was yelling to him, something about not drinking. What was she, a teenager justifying a trip to the pub to her son?
Weird.
Gio used to be fun.
Bess fumbled with her keys and eventually found the right angle and the correct key to open up.
She fell inside, by which time, Marianne had given up on Gio.
‘What’s his problem?’ Bess was slumped on the floor in the hallway and attempted to yank off her boots. ‘You’re allowed a bit of fun.’
‘He’ll cool off; I’ll talk to him.’
‘He’s hot-blooded… Hot-headed? Or is it both? I don’t know.’
Marianne took her other boot off for her before heading to the kitchen with the declaration that Bess needed water and plenty of it.
Bess dragged herself onto the bottom stair. Right now, it felt a long way up to bed.
A glass of water was thrust in front of her and she reluctantly took it and began to drink. She watched Marianne lock up before removing her own coat and scarf. She took Bess’s scarf from around her neck and held the half-empty water glass while Bess wrestled off her coat, the sitting on the bottom stair not exactly making it easy.
Marianne fetched another glass of water when she finished the first and then helped Bess up the stairs to bed.
‘I’m sorry,’ Bess cried as Marianne tucked the duvet around her. She felt like she was a teenager all over again, at her mum’s house, her parents there for her when something went wrong – a break-up, trouble at work, any little thing – and all that was needed to mend it was a night at the family home and magically, it all went away.
But that wasn’t going to happen this time, was it?
Bess remembered all of it now, the morning after the pub, in technicolour. The clock ticked its way towards midday as she emerged from the bedroom and before she did anything else, she cleaned her teeth. She knew she was lucky not to have been sick last night. Thank goodness she’d left the pub when she did.
Gio must think she was a terrible person. In the house share, they’d seen each other drunk plenty of times, they’d gone out drinking together, but it was one thing doing that in your twenties, quite another in your forties. And she was mortified at how she’d behaved last night.
And had Gio been angry?
She spotted her creased forehead in the bathroom mirror as she frowned. Yes, he had been furious from memory.
