‘I won’t be here for very long so I’m not going to change the way I speak.’
‘Is that right? Where are you going, then?’
‘Back to England, if you must know.’
‘And is your mum going with you?’
‘Why, don’t you want her here?’
‘If she makes my dad happy, she can stick around.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on that.’
‘Do you have to be such a pain in the arse?’ he snaps.
‘I don’t have to be, no.’
‘Good.’
‘I just choose to be.’ He glares at me. ‘So can I have a crisp, or what?’ He doesn’t immediately answer so I reach over and grab the packet.
‘Help yourself,’ he says gruffly when I’m already chowing down on a Dorito. He reaches for the phone on a side-table. ‘Have you decided what you want?’
‘Ham and pineapple,’ I reply.
‘Same as me.’
‘Shall we get one between us, then?’
‘No, I want a whole one.’
‘Don’t you like sharing?’
‘I’m sharing my house with you, aren’t I?’
I tense up inside, but try not to let it show. ‘It’s big enough,’ I mumble. He ignores me, dialling the number.
My new ‘home’ has four bedrooms, two of which have been allocated to Mum and me, although it’s only a matter of time before she moves in with Michael. There’s a reasonable-sized kitchen and a fairly large living room. Michael has an ensuite, but there’s only one other bathroom – which means I have to share with Josh. Great. I don’t care how good-looking he is, if he leaves wet towels on the floor I swear I’ll relocate them to his bed.
Josh puts down the phone and turns up the sound on the television. We sit there in silence until the doorbell rings half an hour later to announce the arrival of dinner. It’s enough time to give me food for thought. I’m not usually a bitch, I just . . . Oh, I don’t know. I suddenly feel deflated.
Josh returns with the pizza boxes and dumps them on the coffee table.
‘Are you at work tomorrow?’ I ask, as I struggle to detach the strings of mozzarella hanging on for dear life to a piece of pizza. Josh is clearly not a cutlery and crockery type.
‘Tomorrow’s Sunday, so no,’ he replies bluntly.
‘I’m forgetting what day it is,’ I say quietly. ‘That tends to happen when your whole life is uprooted in such a short time.’
Josh glances at me and his face softens. ‘This is so unlike my dad,’ he comments.
‘This is exactly like my mum,’ I reply, my tone hardening as I pull the cardboard pizza box onto my lap. ‘Another advert break! How many ads do you have on here?’
Josh mutters something to himself and takes an enormous bite out of his pizza. He eats the rest of his meal in silence.
‘So when are you going back to England?’ he asks eventually.
I sweep my dark hair to one side. ‘As soon as I turn eighteen.’
