“I’ll go shopping,” he says, pulling out his phone. “What d’you girls like to eat?”
“Pasta,” Rosa says like she was waiting for the offer.
“Roast chicken,” Finley counters. “With lots of potatoes.”
“How about nothing and you go home?”
Zach ignores me while the others glare. “What about gnocchi with chicken?” he suggests as a half measure between the two. “Come on.” He hooks his hand around my upper arm and drags me towards the door. “You’ll need to help. I don’t know where the shops are around here.”
I’m bundled back into his car before I can mount a proper protest. He sets his phone on the hands-free stand and punches in a search, then turns on the GPS.
“If your phone is navigating, you don’t need me,” I declare, and try to escape.
He reaches over and grabs me around the waist, tumbling me back inside, then squashing me into the seat as he stretches farther and slams the door. He buckles me in, then reverses out the drive before I can try again.
“What are you doing?”
Zach continues to concentrate on the road ahead, frowning slightly as the female voice reads aloud the driving instructions. “I’m making you dinner,” he says as we reach a long stretch of straight road. “Thought that was obvious.”
“But why?”
He shrugs. “I want to get to know you better.”
Another why is on the tip of my tongue, but I leave it unsaid. There’s no genuine hope of getting a straight answer.Just becauseis infused throughout his voice.
Instead, I say, “Sorry about your mother. That must’ve been hard.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Lucky you still had your dad.”
A minute stretches out while I try to remember if he lives with his father or if that lumpy feeling in my mouth is because I’ve just inserted a foot into it. Then he gives another of his casual shrugs. “Didn’t feel like it back then. I only met him for the first time three days after finding her dead.”
“You found her?” My voice cracks with horror. “Oh, my god. I’m so sorry. I—” I shake my head while discarding a bunch of possible words as inadequate.
“What about you?”
“No. I…” My voice gets croaky, and I break off to swallow. This isn’t something I’m used to discussing with anyone. The people who know don’t talk about it. And I don’t tell new people because it just makes everything awkward. “She used to leave me alone for days at a time, so it didn’t feel any different. She just… didn’t come back.”
“How old was your sister?”
“Ten months. A neighbour helped with nappies and formula.” My eyes well up for a second and I pause, remembering. “Not just with me, but with Mum, too. She used to take half the benefit off her hands the moment she got it, so there’d be enough left over for stuff we needed.”
I’d been so determined to take care of Sierra. I couldn’t understand when the social worker who turned up to tell me Mum was dead didn’t leave again after. Nine years old and I’d sincerely believed I could collect mum’s benefit and care for my baby sister—a genuinebaby—with no more help than I had already.
“Your neighbour didn’t report her?”
My laugh is grim. “If you’d been through the system, you wouldn’t either. No matter how bad it gets, people looking out for each other is always better than expecting the government to do it for you.”
“But what—”
“Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?” I want to hug my legs up to my chin but can’t in the confines of the car, so my hands start jiggling wildly. Tapping, cracking knuckles, beating out a tiny drum solo. When the supermarket comes into view, I breathe a sigh of relief.
“You don’t have to do this,” I remind him as we walk along the shelves, him picking out the items he needs, placing me with the important task of holding the basket. “We’re used to taking care of ourselves.”
“You three are used to no one else taking care of you,” he says in a gravelly voice. “It’s not the same.”
“Sure, Dad.”
