“Good. Thank you.”
“What is the story with you and Jon? New home, new car, new job, is he taking over your life completely?” Eddie asked, possibly with a hint of concern entering his voice as he realised just how many areas of his sister’s life Jon was involved in.
Steph became aware at that second that he actually was everywhere she looked, professionally and personally. “No story, although I can see why you might think he’s taking over, but it’s a bit more complicated than you might think,” she admitted, but didn’t expand further.
“I bet. But he didn’t look too happy at your little display of irritation in front of us all, so you might want to save that til you get home because I don’t think he is used to being told off or made a prat of in company,” he replied as Jon appeared behind them.
“Am I safe to join you for the grand unveiling of your new car?”
“I suppose,” was Steph’s slightly petulant reply as Eddie nudged her clumsily.
“Yes, please,” said Steph now after her brother’s rather obvious prompt.
Jon followed her out onto the drive and got into the passenger seat next to her. “Eddie chose well then?” He smiled.
“I suppose he did,” she replied curtly.
“Don’t be childish, Steph, you needed to change your car and this is the car you want. By your own admission this isyour dream car, so what’s the problem?” He seemed genuinely confused by her still sulky mood.
“You. This is too much,” she cried.
“What’s too much?” he asked curiously.
“All of it; the flat, the job and now the car. It’s like you are taking control of my whole life and I’m not your responsibility, I’m not anything to you, not really,” she told him, obviously referring to the fact that he was married.
Jon sighed loudly and thought that they really needed to discuss their relationship and his wife, but yet again not here and not now.
“Look, now may not be the time or place to discuss this further, but a thank you might have been nice,” he said sounding cross with her now. “Leave your old car with Eddie to sell on and just accept that this is yours now.” He gestured towards the car they were still sitting in.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said begrudgingly.
“No. No thinking, just do it and drop the documents into him tomorrow or I will, but the Golf is going nowhere, darling. Unless you’d rather I got you a driver or better still I’ll take you everywhere instead,” he said seriously. Staring at her darkly, Jon forced Steph to break the gaze leaving her looking down at her hands which seemed to indicate his victory in this matter. “That’s settled then. Now I believe you have agreed to maths homework with your nephew.”
“We need to talk about this later,” she told him firmly.
“We will talk later and I look forward to hearing you say thank you,” he said with a strange undertone to his voice.
Steph laughedas Finley’s expression became even more confused as they worked through his homework.
“So, when you do times you can put the numbers in any order, like adding?” he asked with his head firmly in his hands.
“Yes, but with division or subtraction, take away, you have to start with the biggest number otherwise you will end up working with negative numbers,” explained Steph.
“What’s a negative number?” asked Finley.
“Any number before zero is a negative number,” Steph told the confused looking little boy.
“There are no numbers before zero,” said Finley firmly, confident in his own knowledge.
“Ah, now that is where you are wrong. Let me show you.” Steph got a pencil and a piece of paper and drew a number line placing zero in the middle of it and marked numbers up to fifteen after the zero and then began to scribe numbers before the zero.
“Numbers are infinite, Fin, they have no real start or end and although with regular calculations, like you do at school there would be no negative numbers, they do exist,” she said enthusiastically.
“You get far too excited by numbers, sis,” said Eddie sarcastically.
“Whatever,” she replied with a frown before turning back to her nephew. “Does that make any sense?” she asked him.
“Not really,” he admitted, “Because my teacher always says if you have seven sweets you can’t take anymore away than seven because that doesn’t go,” he told his auntie.
