‘William called us on the drive back up and explained the entire situation.’
The tea would have to wait.
I scrunched my toes against my soft rug and leaned back against the rose-pink wall. I loved everything about my tiny house. After I’d moved out of mine and CJ’s flat, I was determined to have everything exactly how I wanted it, from the decorating to the furnishings to the wattage of the bulbs in the light fixtures. It was strange to see Mum sitting on the sofa, sticking out like a sore thumb, when I slotted into place so cleanly at home. I made sense there but she didn’t quite fit here, not quite comfortable.
‘He didn’t go into an awful lot of detail about your relationship with Joseph Walsh but the fact there was a relationship to gloss over at all is bad enough.’
The wall wasn’t enough to support me any more. I lowered myself down until I reached the back of my midnight blue velvet reading chair and perched.
‘I am pulling out all the stops to embarrass you this weekend, aren’t I?’ I said. ‘Terrible timing, I’m sorry.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Mum replied, eyebrows almost meeting in the middle behind her glasses.
‘Messing around with a married man, who just so happens to be Gregory Brent’s son, secretly authoring a book you referred to as “predictable, badly written, misogynistic nonsense”, lying about who wrote the book then causing a bit of a scene at the party?’
‘If that’s your idea of a bit of a scene, I’d hate to see what you consider a full-blown debacle.’ She pulled on the silk scarf she had tied around her neck until both ends were exactly the same length. ‘I’d also like to think you know it would take a lot more than that to embarrass me.’
‘I saw Aunt Carole trying to seduce Joe in the spare bedroom when she thought he was Este Cox,’ I blurted out and my mother blanched.
‘Yes,’ she muttered. ‘That would do it.’
I slid over the edge of my chair and settled into its softness. I’d saved up for months to buy it, way before the book’s success, my first grown-up, non-Ikea furniture purchase. Charlotte could have every Chanel handbag on the planet but I’d never part with this chair.
‘None of what happened at the party was your fault,’Mum went on. ‘And I shouldn’t have walked out of the kitchen this morning, but it wasn’t because of anything you did. I had simply reached my limit with the entire fiasco.’
‘Which brings us back to me messing around with a married man.’
‘Which brings us back to me being horrifically hungover, your father acting like a complete fool, not to mention inviting way more people than he was meant to and ruining my favourite pink blazer, Gregory Brent merely existing and his monstrous son stringing my daughter along, when very clearly he is the one who should be strung up, preferably by a part of his anatomy he should never be allowed to use again.’
The fervour in her voice matched the fury in her eyes and my jaw dropped.
‘You’re not upset with me?’ I asked, pulling a cushion out from behind me and hugging it close to my belly.
Both of her eyebrows eased up her forehead and she gave me The Look.
‘Not about that, but I would like to understand why you felt it necessary to lie to us for so long.’
‘Technically, I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell you,’ I corrected. ‘Joe lied and maybe I backed him up but technically—’
The Look intensified by one degree and I shut my mouth immediately.
‘Sophie, you wrote a book, you submitted it to Mal, you used William as your agent, and at no point in that process did you think it might be worth mentioning it to either of your parents? It’s quite hard not to feel a bit hurt.’
‘Can you really blame me?’ I said when she stoodand crossed the room to my bookshelves where one single copy ofButterflieslay on its side, spine in, hiding on top of my most beloved paperbacks.
‘Who else should I blame?’ she asked, picking up the book and looking at it as though she was seeing it for the first time. ‘William didn’t tell you to keep it a secret, I very much doubt Malcolm did. As far as I can tell, it was your decision.’
Curling my legs up underneath me, I squeezed the cushion closer while she read the back cover copy, her finger following each line down, one at a time.
‘When I first sent it in to Mal, I didn’t want to say anything in case he said it was rubbish,’ I began. ‘I thought about telling you after MullinsParker acquired it, but it still felt too weird. And don’t take this the wrong way but I didn’t want the added pressure, people would’ve looked at it differently if they knew Este Cox was yours and Dad’s daughter.’
‘Because you’re embarrassed by us.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
‘Charlotte’s been very open about letting us know how out of touch we are,’ she went on with a rueful smile. ‘I’m very sorry that stopped you from sharing this with us.’
‘I’m not embarrassed by you, you’re embarrassed by me,’ I said, sitting up. ‘You hate romance novels, Dad has never, ever worked on one in his whole career. You know I’ve always wanted to write and it was really hard to know my parents were looking down on my book when I’d worked so hard on it and don’t say you’re not because you were very, very honest about your thoughts. At least until you thought Joe was the author.’
